Oh, What a Humble Man He Was

Today’s post was nearly preempted by a team meeting, but our supervisor kept it mercifully short and I will try to pass along that spirit of brevity. I’d like some feedback to my proposition that Jesus was first and foremost a highly moral person. Our cultural disdain for both hypocrites and do-gooders might reject a moral Jesus if our understanding of morality is skewed in the slightest from what it actually is. To be in communion with the Creator might be mistakenly understood as “knowing the mind of God”, an arrogant claim flaunted by all sorts of zealots and fanatics. But remember, please, that one of my earliest characterizations of Jesus was his humility. I take this to mean that genuine communion with God requires a humble spirit, and that even a hint of pride or prejudice cancels the authenticity of any such claim. Further, I cannot find that Jesus ever claimed to know the mind of God, but that he amazed and astonished those around him simply by his example. Jesus’ extraordinary prayer life is well documented in the gospels, making it reasonably safe to assume that this was an integral facet of his relationship with Abba. My father often speaks of prayer as a process of alignment rather than petition, a concept that can serve all of us well if we are sincere about becoming humble, moral people that are in genuine communion with God.