Day Eleven

This “Lenten journey” is beginning to seem a little nonsensical. Death as the enemy to be saved from is thus far really just conjecture, and yet a more viable definition of salvation doesn’t seem to be readily forthcoming. The observance of Lent doesn’t seem to be so much Jesus’ idea as it is the Church’s, and the relationship between the two is becoming more ambiguous than absolute. What is it possible to know about the Nazarene without the interpretive filter of the Church? On an even more heretical note, did Jesus really authorize the Church to be the “official” institution to transmit and decipher his teachings?

Again, working from the basis of having more than a passing familiarity with the Church (at least with one of its many branches) I can attest that—to a greater or lesser degree—the institution has a vested interest in how the gospel is interpreted. This is such an obvious truth that it is often overlooked. But from Paul on, there has always been a presence to select which aspects of Jesus’ life were important, and more significantly to determine why they were important. The claim of divine inspiration has figured prominently in this process, and an examination of Paul’s letters will quickly illustrate this point.

All this is to say that it is just as reasonable to believe that the issue of salvation is as much a concern of the Church as it ever was of Jesus. One of the magnificent benefits of the constitutional government developed in the United States of America is the liberation from the Church-State that permits a more objective survey of ecclesiastical influence over moral and philosophical thought in general. It has also provided the freedom to research the historical Jesus in contrast to the Church’s, although the Church’s resistance to this approach remains active and—perhaps for the first time in the history of our country—is regaining a dominant position.