Jesus the Joke?

Do you laugh when you hear the name Jesus? Do you curse? Do you sigh with regret? Or do you sing?

Maybe you are trying to forget him. You hear the name and pull a face. You are disgusted, sick of hearing it, trying to get as far as possible from anything associated with it. You believe he is nothing but a superstition, a product conspiracy formed by some religious elite to subjugate “inferior” persons to their self-serving propaganda.

Perhaps the name has been used in such circles for this kind of purpose. But you're wrong if you think this is the real thing. If you take another look at the accounts of Jesus' life and testament, removing all preconceived ideas you have, and viewing them as they are, this is not the picture you get.

The picture you get is of a man who lived a life of hardship and danger, but who walked throughout it with godlike fearlessness – a man who went toe-to-toe with the religious elite of his day, and silenced them like their arguments were just air. A man who felt for others, even shed tears at the deaths of total strangers. But if he was iconoclastic to the surrounding culture, it was because of his loyalty to the past, more deeply because of his loyalty to the one he called his father, a love which directed all his actions. He ignored the pleasures and thrills of the world, because he himself was the way to a greater future than any of those shallow distractions could offer – he gave the hope of eternal life in a renewed world beyond this one. If anyone put their faith in him, they would never die completely, which was proven in his resurrection from the dead – something which nothing in this planet can offer, though it tries so hard.

What many refer to as science claims that his resurrection is too bizarre to be real, believing science to be omniscience – when there is still so much mystery in the universe it hasn't yet uncovered. Can you prove God doesn't exist, that he didn't create the universe, and that he didn't raise Jesus from the dead? But if he did raise him from the dead, then all the babbling of these scientists is lost to the wind. This world they have carefully built with their academics, their technology and their urban civilizations would be seen for what it is – a clever invention, but not proof of man's absoluteness or God's nonexistence.

Frankly my heart goes out to all who put their trust in earthly things, who believe all that remains to them is a limited time in a dark and sorrow-filled world to enjoy what pleasures they can get under a scarcity of joy and happiness. Only despair remains to them. But those who put their trust in God have hope for eternity – not just monotonous eternal persistence, but life, the thing which every human soul craves. Those who are powerful in this world will enjoy what they can get. The weak, the losers, the bullied, the diseased – the Scriptures say they will be royalty with Jesus in God's kingdom, having everything, if they follow in his footsteps, forgiving their enemies as he has forgiven them. As he said,

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.