On Jesus and Relevancy...

this is something my friend Bethany wrote. I thought it was really cool and wanted to run it past you guys. Let me know your thoughts.

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On Jesus and relevancy...

I think there is a philosophical disservice done to the concept of salvation through belief in the "person of Jesus Christ." The invitation is unattractive in its seeming exlusiveness: that all men must come to the recognition of a single path of "enlightenment" contained in a particular individual. What I think has been lost, misrepresented, or deemphasized is the philosophy Christ embodies. The point of emphasis of salvation does not rest simply, though necessarily, in his person alone, but equally on his representation. Perhaps the general fear for this line of thinking is the slippery slope: that to focus on Christ as a philosophy and not as a person would lead to alternative means to God. But such a reduction is not inevitable. For the philosophy of Christ includes his physicality, his humanness. In fact, the very reality of his humanity is what makes salvation through him possible at all, on multiple levels. But where Christ becomes distasteful to the thinker, philosopher, or skeptic is on account of what he has been reduced to. Not only is salvation through Christ open-ended and all-encompassing, but the most inclusive creed of all regarding everything we can recognize as absolutes. What Christians have done in my experience is created sub-cultures and boxes that has left vital elements of truth in the cold. They have excluded the secular world from their indoctrinated applications of his truth in an attempt to create protective hedges from falsifications, from sin. This is not done without seemingly good intentions. Yet it leaves some of us wondering if there "weren't more out there." Having experienced truth elsewhere, Jesus Christ in turn appears lacking, close-minded, and irrelevant. But if we are able to burn these boxes, we will discover that what we are drawn to outside of these self-erected bubbles is still represented in him. When we can enjoy all truth as God's truth, and remember that Christ is God's very essence embodied, it frees us to concentrate all our philosophy of righteousness, goodness, and truth on him and him alone. The fact that God in his graciousness did indeed concentrate all truth into one individual is not exclusive, but infinitely kind. It leaves us looking to one man for answers- rather than the entirety of the cosmos.