Jesus

I listened to "Pastor Steve" deliver his sermon yesterday on "A War in a Manger." The content of his sermon and my perusal of the Bible as I listened raised a few questions in my mind. The first was: "Wouldn't it be cool if you could interupt the pastor and argue with him?" Of course, it wouldn't be, because most of the interuptions would be for idiotic reason. Not brilliant and incisive reasons like I'm sure everyone would consider mine to be.

The real first question was what the sermon was all about. War. The war fought by God for us. He started off pointing out with examples how neat it is when your big brother, big sister, father, or someone else comes to your assistance, fights for you, and gets you out of a jam. Heather, by the way, I am still waiting for your lease. Anyway, he refered to Revelations 12 in which John dreams of a war in heaven and describes Satan as an emormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. He then discussed how Jesus birth was a part of God's battle for our souls.

What battle?

God is all-powerful, right? God created everything. God created the good things, god created the bad things. If Satan exists, he exists at God's discretion. If God wanted there to be no evil in the world, all he would have to do is tell his angels, like Picard tells Number One: "Make it so." And it would be so. Of course, because good is dependent upon the existence of evil, he would wipe out good in the process, but that is beside the point. Or is it. The point is, things are the way they are because this is the way God wants them. He does not have to fight, battle or go to war with anyone to keep it this way. God is not fighting for us. God put us here and gave us free will. We can fight for him, but he does not have to fight for us.

Within the previous paragraph is another question. Satan. It is not all that difficult to prove, through logic and deduction, that God exists. It is not possible to prove Satan exists. Not as an entity similar to God that is capable of doing battle with him. Satan is more of a representation of the evil that has to exists so that we might enjoy the good.

Here's a beauty. I posed this question to Sue just as a rhetorical question. Those drive her crazy. I was really just teasing her. It turned out to be a question that has plagued biblical scholars since the Gospels were first published.

Why was Jesus baptized by John?

An innocent sounding question until you consider what baptism represents.

Baptism is about repentence: Matthew 3:11, Acts 19:4. Baptism brings the gift of the Spirit and signifies our becoming a child of God. Jesus had no sin. Jesus is part of the Trinity, he did not need the gift of the Holy Spirit. He was already the son of God.

John the Baptist recognized this when Jesus asked to be Baptized. He protested that he couldn't baptize Jesus, Jesus should be baptizing him. Matthew 3:14.

"If we have not worried about Jesus’ baptism, been disturbed by its occurrence, puzzled over its implications, then we have not thought enough about baptism." http://abbyorr.home.att.net/1Epiphany05.htm

Don't read any further for the answer to the question. It isn't here. There are some other articles on the Internet and I'm sure lots of literature elsewhere that attempt to provide an answer. There is a suggestion that Jesus needed to be baptized to become a High Priest. But if that were the case, why would there be such a fuss over the question?

To me, the answer is not important, if there is an answer. It's only if you accept the Bible as infallible that it is a problem. To me it can be classified with the other 700 or so inconsistencies in the Bible that can't be explained. So what. I would be more disturbed if there were no inconsistencies.