Dear Luke,
I must say that I am cheered by the
final sentence of your letter—I believe that the devil does indeed tempt us to
despair, to give up, to reach for each answers when the truth, especially a
difficult truth, draws near. Faith in
Jesus Christ is not easy, and I believe it should change your life, and as
such, it demands a thoughtful, mature response.
To make an emotional decision now without intellectual understanding and
a community to support you leaves you in danger of feeling lost when the first
crisis of faith hits later, and I am certain it will. A deep faith, built upon a carefully
considered faith in God, will be able to last through the storms of life. When waves are washing over your head and the
storm beats at the door, you will be glad you endured to the end and made your
decision then, rather than rushed to judgment because you grew impatient in
your search.
As for some of your other
questions, I must let you come to those conclusions. I do not believe that one can know about the
existence of God and not be driven to worship him, but understand that I have
never stood in your shoes and wondered about the benefits and costs of coming
to faith. Faith in God is the milieu in
which I lived this life of mine, and so it is impossible to remove myself from
my context and consider the case from your side. The more I learn about God, the more drive I
am to worship. I hope that you reach the
same conclusion, and yet I will let you reach it in your own time. I do not pressure you to decide, believing
you to be fully capable of such a decision, and yet I will support you every
step of the journey.
Your previous story is certainly a
strange one in these times. It’s hard to
imagine telling this to a child and having them believe it at face value, what with
society’s current dismissal of demons and the like. Yet, like you, I believe it to be true. While there were no witnesses beyond Jesus,
multiple sources confirm it, and so we must wrestle with it, with what it means
for the story as well as for the bigger picture of all of creation. The reality of the devil and his temptations
seem to be clear with every page of the newspaper, but he is readily dismissed
by many.
It seems as though the temptation
of Jesus was a sort of preparation for his public ministry. Maybe it was thought that if he could resist
that temptation that nothing else would prove to equal the pressure of that
particular crucible. From what I have
heard, he leapt directly from one trial to the next. The Spirit’s power filled him as he left the
desert, and he returned to Galilee, where a report, probably of his baptism,
began to spread throughout the country.
Thousands hung upon his every word, and he was the talk of most towns. Jesus visited many synagogues, and his name
was praised by all. It was one of these
synagogue visits, surprisingly to his hometown of Nazareth, where he had been
raised, that things suddenly went very wrong.
It was the Sabbath, and so Jesus, being a good
Jew, went to synagogue. I’m sure
countless Jews pressed to the front to capture every word that was said, and so
when Jesus stood up to read the scroll of Isaiah, a prophet, and unrolled it,
one could probably hear a pin drop in the room.
Word had spread fast about this man, and now he was here in the flesh,
and no one wanted to miss a thing.
Jesus read from the scroll, I am covered in the Spirit of the Lord, who
has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
I will announce release to the captives, sight to the blind, and freedom
to the oppressed.
With that, he sat down, having
given the rolled scroll back to the attendant.
Not a single eye deviated from Jesus, and he said very simply to the
awaiting crowd, “As you have heard these words, this Scripture is fulfilled
today.”
The response was overwhelmingly
positive—he spoke graciously, and they wondered at this man who had grown up as
the son of Joseph, the carpenter.
But Jesus continued, and this is
where the story wanders into deeper waters, where it changes from a feel-good
story about a man’s homecoming to a life-threatening tale of anger and passion.
Jesus continued in his
teaching. You will probably quote the proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself’ to me,
and you will demand that I do the same things here that have been reported in
Capernaum. But I must say that a prophet
does not find acceptance in his hometown.
I am not the first—think of Elijah, who was not sent to any of widows in
Israel, when there was famine for over three years, going to help the widow in
Sidon, at Zarephath. Or remember Elisha,
who did not heal any of Israel’s lepers, but instead cleaned Naaman the Syrian.
Not exactly light words for his
homecoming, and the crowd reacted with fury and rage upon hearing them. They did not stop at words of hatred, but
rather drove the man out and up the nearest hill, in the hopes of hurling him
off the cliff and ending any dispute.
Jesus somehow escaped their murderous intent, slipping through a crowd
blinded by anger and going on his way.
It’s hard to imagine that Jesus might have endured in a challenge with
the devil and then been caught up by a crowd seeking his head because of a
short sermon he preached against them, but this will not be the last time a
group turns against Jesus for his harsh words.
Luke, I hope that you get a picture
of Jesus as someone who challenges each of us.
In my life of faith, I have been challenged constantly to not grow
comfortable and complacent, to continue seeking God in all I do. I don’t believe that Jesus challenges us to
make us angry, but, like this crowd, it is easy to grow defensive in the face
of confrontation. I believe that God
does it out of love, because he wants us to keep growing, but we don’t always
hear it in love. Don’t believe that
Jesus does these things just to rile us up, but rather think of them as an
opportunity to re-examine your life and make sure that you are living
faithfully.
Sincerely,
Theophilus
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