Trusting Jesus's prescriptions for living

[Thomas]

Anyway, that might have just been a custom for disciples in that culture. Go sell something and give alms.

Yes it was ... that was nothing new or surprising, that was expected ...

But the text I think you're referring to, the companion to Matthew 19:21, is Luke 18:22:
"Which when Jesus had heard, he said to him: Yet one thing is wanting to thee: sell all whatever thou hast ..."

The Rock didn't sell his home. Was he being disobedient?

How do we know what he did or did not do?

There are simple, and I would say social, prescriptions, and they are quite reasonable and sensible: Be kind to each other. Don't take on more than you can chew. Don't hold a grudge. Don't mix with bad company. All good stuff, but nothing particularly 'Christian' about that ... anybody, theist, atheist, agnostic, would see it as good advice.

That's not His primary mission.

The prescriptions for that, I would suggest, were delivered like a koan, by which I mean 'the answer' is not the point. It's the grappling with the thing that does the work, that's where the mileage is.

A Christian life is on the edge.

 

[RJM]

Perhaps until the heart and soul of every person gets such a message our hopes for world peace and social justice are in vain. With such a message I think peace and justice would flow quite naturally.

Absolutely so.

But would that ever come to pass?

I believe Christ spoke (in spirit) to the hearts and minds of 'his sheep' knowing that the material world* will always continue to stay in the hands of 'the prince of this world'.

Just my own opinion ...

*EDIT: nature red in tooth and claw

 

[RJM]

There are simple, and I would say social, prescriptions, and they are quite reasonable and sensible: Be kind to each other. Don't take on more than you can chew. Don't hold a grudge. Don't mix with bad company. All good stuff, but nothing particularly 'Christian' about that ... anybody, theist, atheist, agnostic, would see it as good advice.

That's not His primary mission.

I think so too. The 'social justice warrior' Jesus is a modern construction imo. Christ came to the broken and the lost, to bring personal peace and healing. Other things too, of course. But not focussed on world peace and unity, or community social standards.

However it's just my own opinion and I don't want to derail the thread ...

 

[wil]

I recall when I was 19, I sold all I had (car, stereo, didnt have nuch.) Clothes went to goodwill and I hit the road... done that a nunber of times in my life. Commitment to start over it is.

I dont think they had mini storage back then anyway... that is a modern day contraption, young people needing to pay for a place to keep the stuff they dont use.

 

[Longfellow]

And now we even have AI Jesus, lol

Yeah, I forgot that one.

 

[Tony Bristow-Stagg]

I recall when I was 19, I sold all I had (car, stereo, didnt have nuch.) Clothes went to goodwill and I hit the road... done that a nunber of times in my life. Commitment to start over it is.

I dont think they had mini storage back then anyway... that is a modern day contraption, young people needing to pay for a place to keep the stuff they dont use.

We had 8 tracks in our vehicles, very modern, ha ha .

Yes we basically only moved on with maybe a suitcase or two!

Regards Tony

 

[Tony Bristow-Stagg]

IMO Christ didn’t preach material living standards. He showed the way to personal inner peace. He was concerned with the inner heart and soul. He came for the hopeless and the lost and broken.

What about Matthew 5-7

@Longfellow I see this as good life instructions.

Regards Tony

 

[Longfellow]

Thanks to everyone for responding to this. It will take some time for me to digest it all and respond.

 

[Longfellow]

I know he said things like that, which all flow from this:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

But to me Christ’s message was never about world unity or social justice. He spoke on a spiritual level to the heart and soul of every person. IMO

If you mean that he didn't give any prescriptions for political or institutional decision making, I agree.

 

[Longfellow]

Yes it was ... that was nothing new or surprising, that was expected ...

But the text I think you're referring to, the companion to Matthew 19:21, is Luke 18:22:
"Which when Jesus had heard, he said to him: Yet one thing is wanting to thee: sell all whatever thou hast ..."


How do we know what he did or did not do?

There are simple, and I would say social, prescriptions, and they are quite reasonable and sensible: Be kind to each other. Don't take on more than you can chew. Don't hold a grudge. Don't mix with bad company. All good stuff, but nothing particularly 'Christian' about that ... anybody, theist, atheist, agnostic, would see it as good advice.

That's not His primary mission.

The prescriptions for that, I would suggest, were delivered like a koan, by which I mean 'the answer' is not the point. It's the grappling with the thing that does the work, that's where the mileage is.

A Christian life is on the edge.

I'm grateful for all your comments and questions. It will take some time to respond to all of them. For now I'll just say that the questions in my original post were questions that I imagined coming from some skeptical viewpoints. Some of them are questions that I'm asking myself, but not all of them. I thought they might stimulate discussion. It seemed like a good idea at the time!

I've been thinking that part of what Jesus wants for us is to trust his prescriptions for living, because that's what's best for us, but I'm not sure what it can mean to trust his prescriptions, when there is so much uncertainty about what he actually said and did, we don't have all the context, and we don't have him with us to correct our misunderstandings. I have some vague feelings about some possible solutions for all of that, but I haven't found words for them yet.

(later) Just now I thought of a different way of saying what I'm discussing: what it means to be his disciple, and why and how to be one.

 

[Longfellow]

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

Everybody seems to forget about the new commandment that he gave us, as a way for all people to know who his disciples are.

 

[Longfellow]

I don't seem to be able to stop embarrassing myself. I chose a wrong thread title again. What I really want to discuss is about being a dsiciple of Jesus, but not what that means in Christianity today. I might have already started a thread for that.

 

[Longfellow]

(recopied from Christians and disciples)

I was tempted to start a new thread about being and making disciples of Jesus, but I think I'll keep it in this thread.

First, it may or not be possible in our time to be what Jesus called "disciples," but I'll use "disciples" for whatever we can be in relation to Jesus, that brings out the best in us. It may or may not be possible to choose to be a disciple. It might be something that just happens to people sometimes. Maybe the best that we can do is ask to be one, hope that we are one, and try to learn to act like one.

 

[Longfellow]

One way that I'm thinking of myself is as a person who hopes that he's whatever Jesus called a disciple, and is trying to learn to live the way he says to live and be the kind of person that he says to be. One way that I use the Bible is as a kind of anchor or tuning fork for what I'm learning, studying and practicing with some other people who might be disciples, using some spiritual growth study circle materials, and some local community service projects for practice.

 

[Longfellow]

I'll try answering the questions in my opening post, from the point of view of a person who is hoping that he's a disciple of Jesus, and studying and practicing with some other people, In study circles using some spititual growth materials, trying to learn to live the way Jesus says to live, and to be the kind of person he says to be.

- Is there such a thing as Jesus's prescriptions for living?

There was for a few years in and between Galilee and Jerusalem near the end of the Second Temple period, but I'm not sure that there's anything now that I would call Jesus's prescriptions for living. Maybe, if I think of a metaphorical "NT" Jesus, I would call what he says in the NT "Jesus's prescriptions for living, but not claiming to know how much that resembles the real one.

- Which Jesus? One of the ones in the gospels? One of Paul's Jesuses? Some historical Jesus? One of the Jesuses of Christianity or Islam or Baha'i or philosophical schools or personal philosophies (mine for example ) ?

The only one that I have access to whose prescriptions I'm using for tuning is the one that I'm constructing from the NT.

- What does "Jesus's prescriptions for living" even mean? What he says in the gospels? Everything that the New Testament says about how to live? What I think the real Jesus said if there was one?

Things that Jesus says in the gospels and in Acts in the NT.

- How can we know what his prescriptions are, if they are not what the NT says they are? Or even if they are, when there is so much disagreement about what it means and what it's all about, and so much missing from the context?

I'm using the NT, so that question doesn't apply to me.

- What does it mean to trust his prescriptions for living? Cut off my right hand if it has an ugly scar (which it does and which I certainly do not intend to do)? If not, just pick and choose whatever I like?

I will need to think about that one. I don't take everything literally, but I don't actually know how I choose what to take literally and what not to.

- Are there, or have there ever been, any people anywhere who actually do or did trust his prescriptions for living?

I think that probably there always have been some, but I wouldn't know how to find out. I think that I know some people who are doing that now, including me.

- Is there any reason to trust his prescriptions for living? What happens or might happen if people do it, that anyone would want to happen?

I think that it helps bring out the best in people, in society, and in the world around us, for the benefit of all people everywhere, and that it's an important part of what's missing in peace, environment and social justice movements, for everything to stop getting worse and start getting better.

- Is it something that he would want people to do?

Yes.

- Is it something that God approves of if there is one?

Yes.

 

[Longfellow]

(A note here, some read the Reformation's Sola Scriptura, 'scripture alone', to mean anyone who reads scripture understands it. It doesn't, and it never did. The idea that scripture is magically 'self-explanatory' or 'self-disclosing' is refuted by scripture itself.)

Yes, I know. It was more a transfer of doctrinal and administrative authority for some people, from Rome, first to Wittenberg, then to an ever-increasing number of centers.

The Lord's Prayer.

The whole of the Gospel is right there.

I agree: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. "

 

[RJM]

spiritual growth study circle materials

Are they all Bible based?

 

[Thomas]

I would have thought the first step in being a 'disciple' of Christ is identifying as Christian ...

... and the Eucharist rears its head there, too.

It is a personal relationship.

 

[wil]

It is a personal relationship.

Personal i agree.....and dont be Judas.

 

[TheLightWithin]

Radical Non-Escalation: Break cycles of retaliation. Absorb petty slights and insults without mirroring the aggression; respond in ways that neutralize hostility rather than amplifying it.

Cycles of retaliation are broken,

When people talk about breaking cycles of violence or breaking cycles of retaliation, I'm always a little puzzled what they mean.
I mean I can grok the idea of dismissing really petty things. But I'm puzzled by the talk of BREAKING CYCLES...

I get the impression they actually see violence and retaliation as cycles. I guess they can make their cases for that, but... if they think everybody has to take their turn for the "cycle" to go on... and breaking it is as easy as sitting out your turn... I'm not so sure.
I remember a teacher once many years ago talking about some encounter where someone didn't hit someone back. And the teacher had a truly amazed expression "And the cycle was broken!" As if confident that the cycle ended there, because someone broke it.
As if the aggressor never hits twice, or three times, or harasses, or something.
At what point does someone get to retaliate or fight back?
Or just humbly accept being targeted and harassed?
I feel like there's more to the story.
What are the prescriptions there?