Chapter Two: The Christocentric View

What if you were approached by someone with bible in hand who said, "Learn this and live it and you will get to heaven?" Better yet, listen to a really smart preacher and you will be told how to interpret it all correctly. Or ... what if a person said, "Look at Jesus, who he was, how he lived, how he treated people." Now, if you can get your arms around that concept, God will give you a new pair of eyes.

"But I am not perfect, nor do I pretend to be." Intimidating isn't it? That is, to try to compare yourself to the image of a perfect person? Exactly. Consider for a moment that the pictures of Christ with a halo are man-made. Also, the kinds of actions and teaching we have begun to think about were not well received by the religious masters. "Oh yes, but they were bad people." No, they were just like everyone else; they had expectations and Jesus didn't cater to them. Instead, he continually broke their established practices and fell into company with vulgar reprobates. So the picture before us is one of a person who expressed God in life by sharing the experience with humanity. Instead of the sterile Christ, there is another picture -- one that is raw and unsophisticated.

Curly had a face like leather. He was as rugged as a mountain. He rolled a cigarette like he was enjoying it before lighting up. The comedy becomes serious all of a sudden when the city slicker turns timid conversation to the cowboy's life. The old cowhand spoke: "You city folk. You worry a lot...You all come up here about the same age. You spend fifty weeks getting knots in your rope and you think two weeks will untie them for you. None of you get it...You know what the secret to life is?...One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that, and everything else don't mean nothing." "That's great, but what's the one thing?", the city slicker asked. "That's what you've got to figure out." I've seen Jack Palance seems like all my life in movies, but that was my favorite performance. (Acknowledgment to Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz, the screenwriters of "City Slickers".) Almost immediately, folks started trying to figure out what that one thing was since the movie never said outright. Seems like when it comes to interpreting bible it tends to get down to a multiplicity of views -- enough to convince anyone that interpretations are like bellybuttons. I have a painting, not even the original -- just a print, hanging on my living room wall. It's a man with sorta long hair bent over with a cloth washing another man's feet. Doesn't say a word, but speaks volumes and doesn't take three major points in twenty minutes to get there.

The bible is good recommended reading for all. But I suggest that it be read from the standpoint of the way it came to be put down on paper. That is, all of it was preceded by a person around which the narratives and stories were written. That person foremost was extraordinary in manner of life. Talked a lot about real living -- down to earth living. Every verse somehow fits into that picture; not as bits and pieces of a do this and don't do that book of law, but as a revelation of God in man, and a credible witness that followed.

"That's just too easy," may be the response from the religious scholar who chooses to major in minors, but if it were so easy, why didn't the learned scribes of Jesus' day pick up on the simple Message? Blind, deaf, and hard-hearted was what the Saviour called them -- and those were the best of the best. Human nature has not changed -- the way up is down, and that is hard to muster if it's your profession to provide the authoritative answer to matters of faith. No, surrender of ego is never easy.

The Christocentric View is all about that -- surrender of ego. That's not all, but the journey has to start somewhere. Reading this, wouldn't it instill great confidence if your writer had all the credentials to claim authoritatively that the answers to life's most pressing questions are at hand? I make no such claim. In fact, what we are about to consider is so counter-intuitive it may cause a right brain/left brain collision. First though, the human intellect likes to have something to compare to. That's how we learn -- through difference and contrast. So what I suggest is that folks attempt to find the solutions to life. Consult the great philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and sociologists -- even do a great deal of freelance thinking and experiencing for yourself. Because if you don't, what will follow will come too easy to mean anything. But then, after awhile, come here and revisit these words: "I am wrong, He is right. And do I know that?" This Christocentric View can be found by anyone willing to ask and seek.

But there is a premise built into this new pair of eyes. It's not something a person can go to school and get; you can't buy it; and no one can give it to you. It's one thing...freedom. Not the liberty to "strut naked through the crosswalk in the middle of the day," but a different kind of freedom. This kind has to do with freeing oneself. Being free for Christ is not an easy thing. Religious folk want to get all wrapped up in doing things -- outward expressions that anyone can mimic and possibly gain great standing in the institution. The really tough part is being open to who Christ was and what he was saying, and then living it. Jesus would say, if you want to pray, go into your closet. If you want to give, do it when you won't be seen. If you want to fast, do not even make so much as a grimace to let the rest in on it. You see, it has to do with who we are on the inside. And we will find that the church without walls has a great deal to do with this kind of counter-intuitive thinking.

Rights of Possession are extreme in importance to contemporary humanity. We learned it as children. It's mine! And then we kicked and screamed and bit until the other one let go so we could have our toy. It is the curse of us all. "I have God -- I'm a born again Christian." Now there's a claim, isn't it? Is it possible that there may be some faulty thinking there? You know, Peter made a similar claim once, "Lord, I'll never deny you!" There was something about the essence of Christ that he needed to learn that day. He learned. In our day, we have been programmed to think in terms of essentials. Once met, those essentials turn out to be the standard of measurement for everything and everyone else. Essence works differently. If one were to ask, "What are the essentials of Christ?", the answers would be many and varied. But if asked, "What is the essence of Christ?," there would be answers that touch on value and meaning. The Christocentric View is a journey that seeks essence. Sometimes in this journey it will be more important to ask the question than to know the answer.

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