From: Amthiessen@aol.com
Date: Thu Jun 1, 2000 7:51 am
Subject: Re: [streams-online] Jesus as model
Hello, this is our first time to enter the forum as more than readers. We are Robert and Anne Thiessen, working in Mexico bringing the Good News to the mostly unreached Mixtec Indians of Guerrero. We've been here since 1992.
We have been following the forum, but not closely, as we have been
moving around a great deal the last two months. We are settling in again, and reading this morning's "Jesus as Model" of Christine deserves a reply.
It feels like a serious attempt to understand what Jesus would have us be about, and yet it also feels like a modern mindset overlaying itself on an ancient text and culture. Especially the physical 'foot'. Growing in stature, for Jesus and all his fellowmen, probably did not include the vast energy we today might spend to achieve the physical goals set out in this model.
In having lived with some of the poorest people of Mexico, the most
marginalized, for seven yrs now, and before that the poor people of Honduras for three, it has been born to us that 'poverty' ,as we think of it, is not their greatest need, not even by their own standards. When we as messengers of the Good News go someplace not our own, and make the relative difference in lifestyles the opening point of contact, we communicate something much more than we intend. We go intending to make God's love known, and even though that does become a part of our message we also affirm the superiority of our own culture (West or otherwise; I am told that the Koreans have the
same tendency as we do) and the need for changes far broader than what the Gospel essentially entails. We communicate by language much stronger than words assumptions not explicitly found in the Gospel of Love of Jesus Christ and His redemption. Perhaps only because of our limited breadth of experience, but we have not yet seen this approach make it easier to communicate the essentials of the Gospel.
Obviously there is much that can be debated here. I wish to hold up
another "Jesus as Model", one more explicit in Scripture. In Phil 2:5-11, Paul tells us (all of us) to have the mind of Christ, or the attitude of Christ. Even though He was equal with God, had all the power of God, had all the knowledge of God, the wisdom of God, and the resources of God; even though He knew the full extent of Man's problem, and had all resources to work from, He did one thing. He left it all to come to us as a babe.
It says He humbled Himself. That is the most difficult thing for those of us raised in a culture of superiority. Once He was among us, He began to grow in stature, and all the rest. He had to learn the culture of the Jews, as any other Jewish child had to. He had to work from within the limitations of that culture, and when He didn't, what He did we call miracles.
It was clearly God who was honored on these occasions, not some superior dominant culture. Jesus walked about in faith that the Kingdom of God, even though it was starting out as small as a mustard seed, would really grow into the biggest plant in the garden. And there's that curious little byline in that parable, "even the birds of the air find shelter there". That's the 'developement' angle on this. Do we have faith in the power of God through His Church, that this Church is to be His vehicle of redemption, all kinds of redemption, that He will do miracles through them, and He will cause them to grow into all fullness?
I know all of you will reply "yes" to that question; I trust that you all will; I do not want to bring into question your devotion to Christ Jesus.
Let us be careful of how really deep is our cultural dependency, and learn to look for the true freedom God seeks to bring to people through the redemption of Jesus christ.
Perhaps this whole 'comment' is badly placed, or timed. If so, please forgive me for entering in so boldly, when it is I who am preaching an 'Incarnational' model.
