Skip to main content

Dr. Joe vs Jesus


I had a teacher in high school who had his doctorate in English. He was the only teacher in this school of 2,000 students that had his PHD, and I was uhhh fortunate enough to have him as my instructor, not just one year, but two. As in most large schools, our class of 500 had been divided up into several learning levels. English had always been my strong suit, and so I managed to make it into the honors level English class. I don't recall much of what Dr. Joe (as we not-so-affectionately called him behind his back) actually taught us (or tried to teach us), but over the course of those two years, there was one phrase he said repeatedly and often to this class of honor students, "God! You're so dumb!" We would sneak sidelong glances to each other and grin. Hopefully without him seeing us. I don't think any of us took it personally, and yet, thirty something years later, I still recall his words.

Several weeks ago I began to read the book of Matthew. I've read it before, but I wanted this time to be different. I wanted to see Jesus in Matthew's words. I didn't want to just read what Jesus said or did. I wanted to see His personality, His heart. I made it to Matthew 17 where the disciples try to cast out a demon unsuccessfully. When Jesus hears about their failure, He says, "What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many times do I have to go over these things?" (The Message)

In the past, I would read those words of Jesus, not just in Matthew but in other places where He seems impatient and frustrated with the disciples, and I would hear Dr. Joe's "God! You're so dumb!" but this time, instead of interpreting Jesus' words through my experience with a high school teacher and my own frustrations with myself, I interpreted them through what I know of God. Namely that God is love, and everything He says and does can only come from love and lead toward love. Period. No exceptions. That's who God is. Love.

Jesus' words are not derogatory. They are not spoken in angry frustration. They are words of longing, words of yearning. He aches for our hearts to understand, to grasp even a poppy seed of the reality of who He is and the power and strength and the incomprehensible bigness of God. He pleads with us, "Come on, guys! Isn't it obvious? Don't you see? It's so amazing - I want so much for you to get it! I want so much for you to see it!"

He just wants us to believe, to have faith, to take Him at His word. I want to respond to the yearning of Jesus' heart! I want so much to comprehend His incomprehensible love!   


Labels:

Comments

  1. Martha MelodyJuly 27, 2011 at 10:28 AM

    I just read through Matthew recently and was struck by the same thing--that is seemed like Jesus was exasperated and fustrated with the disciples (and thus with us), yet that contradicts what we know of God--excellent insight! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rethinking My Rightness

I used to label myself as a conservative Christian. Used to. Lately, I'm almost ashamed to even be called a "christian" (that lowercase "c" is on purpose). It seems that over the last eight to ten years, being "christian" has become more about being right than about being Christ-like. It's more about enforcing a perceived level of moral behavior that has nothing to do with a person's heart (what was that Jesus said about a "whitewashed tomb" in Matthew 23:27?). Being "christian" has become more about power, control, and supremacy than it is about loving your neighbor or your God. I'm deeply saddened by the current "christian" focus on the sins of others (LGBTQ anyone?), by the lack of humility, by the pain inflicted (knowingly and unknowingly) on those who are unlike us. I've recently seen the ugliness of my own whitewashed tomb. I don't like it. I cried to see that my heart contains such haughtiness an...
1 comment
Read more

How Do You Wait?

The barren one is now in her sixth month.  Not one promise from God is empty of power  for nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1: 37 The Passion Translation I've never thought that much about Elizabeth. Gabriel speaks here to Mary - the mother-to-be of none other than GOD Himself! Who has a thought to spare for this side character in THE story of divine visitation? God come to earth. Wow. Talk about a headline for the New York Times! Why does Gabriel even mention Elizabeth? I don't know, but I'm glad he did.  I read these verses with a different perspective this morning.  "The barren one." Elizabeth is now past childbearing years. It's not a secret. Everyone in her community knows she's barren (it's obvious). The life part of her life is over. There is no hope for her to have her dream - a life like her friends have. She's different from her family, her neighbors. In a time when children are everything, she has nothing.  And now it's too late...
1 comment
Read more

Believing the Lies

My husband and I recently watched The Help - a story about a group of African American women who worked as maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the '60s. One of the protagonists works for a woman "who got no b'ness havin' babies." This woman, this family maid and nanny, tells her little two year old ward regularly, "You is pretty. You is smart. You is impor'ant." How difficult it is for us to believe that about ourselves - really, to believe anything good about ourselves. I always try to be my raw self when I write a blog post. Today is no exception. So I confess that I've been drowning in a storm of lies lately. My head knows they're lies, and I could easily tell anyone else in the same place that they're lies, but I haven't been able to get a grip. There have been so many of them coming at me at once. It seems that I just break the surface, gulp some fresh air of truth then get pulled back under. One thing I know: the enemy of our ...
7 comments
Read more