JOHN – Chapter 2
What/who was important to Jesus?
Heartfelt faith/belief in Jesus over Fundamentalism/blind bible literalism and placing trust in Him over physical objects such as torahs/bibles, money, etc.
What needs did Jesus meet?
He met people’s physical/spiritual needs by turning the ordinary, dull and mundane into the extraordinary when he turned water into wine---which was a marriage between the spiritual and physical realms
What did Jesus ask or require of his followers?
To not make the church into a money-grubbing enterprise/empire
What issues did Jesus address (relationships, work, money, character, religious practice, etc.)?
Capitalist Materialism and Consumerism or money (Sadly though the American church has all but heeded Christ’s advice and turned itself into a Capitalist Enterprise/Empire---for most traditional church buildings are being replaced by large shopping mall like compounds replete with bookstores, music stores, etc. in which preachers are the salesperson selling a product (their view of Christianity) to the consumers (congregation), in which critical thinking (especially in Fundamentalist/Christianity Lite churches but occasionally moderate/liberal churches) is bypassed, so that a theological worldview can be quickly consumed by the masses) See http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGIH_enUS266US266&q=Christian+Consumerism and http://www.cjd.org/paper/consum.html for more information (Just like society has turned sex into a commodity---the church has turned Christianity into a commodity)
What is compelling to you about Jesus in this section?
How He is the only one that knows other people’s hearts regardless of what Fundamentalist/Bible Literalists think: they do not know other people’s hearts
How do followers respond to Jesus?
Trust
What in this section challenges us to respond/ imitate/obey?
Place our trust in Jesus over physical objects
How did Jesus change the world (for an individual or for a community)? He provided/provides everything for people that ask
What vision of being missional do you glimpse for yourself? For the church? The church must renew the mystery of God’s uncertainty over the absolutist elitism and Absolute Certainty of Fundamentalism and to show that God uses uncertainty to provide for us in unpredictable ways---which is more consistent with the whole of God’s character in the scriptures rather than the static certainty of Fundamentalism’s bible literalism in which God becomes wholly predictable (The danger and slippery slope of the Absolute Certainty of Fundamentalism is that they place their trust in human thoughts and biases instead of the person of Christ---the danger of this is that if one were to pick up the New World Translation of the Bible and read John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a god” and took it literally---what do you think would happen? See that’s the danger of taking translations at face value and equating the theological biases of bible translators with God’s actual words---for the physical [like money and bibles] is corruptible but the spiritual is eternal)
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