Searching for the Real Jesus Christ
Obi-Wan Kenobi once advised Luke Skywalker to not trust his eyes, because “your eyes can deceive you.” Most of us can recall an instance from our own non-Jedi lives when these words rang true. Think of a time when your eyes saw what they wished to see: a person you were thinking about on a busy street, a heart-shaped pebble you were looking for on the beach.
This phenomenon, called motivated perception, has been explored in psychological research for decades. Indeed, the world as we conceive it in our awareness is not exactly an accurate representation of what it truly is. Our perception is often biased, selective, and malleable, and can be applied to our perception or understanding of God.
Depeche Mode wrote a song called Personal Jesus. Some of the lyrics include ‘Your own personal Jesus, someone to hear your prayers, Someone who cares.’
The idea appears to be that people create their own versions of Jesus, or other savior- like figures, to suit their own needs. The question is, though, whether our imagining of Jesus is any better than that of those in the rest of society. How do we create for ourselves our own personal Jesus - a version of Jesus that makes us feel comfortable and self-satisfied? Are we genuinely seeking the real Jesus?
You might say that if we want the real Jesus, then surely, we just turn to the Bible. Absolutely right, but even in getting to the Jesus of the Bible, we have to get through ourselves as the individual readers. That’s the problem. We often think that we have Jesus pinned down by the time we open the scriptures to search for him. Often, we find just what we’re looking for – but have we got the whole picture?
To get the true picture we need, from my perspective, three things:
The Holy Spirit. Jesus said “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth … He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:12-14). To know and understand who Jesus is, we will need his spirit to lead us.
The Community. In a society where individualism is rife, we need to be open to challenges from others in our Church community. Why not ask someone who you find personally challenging, to hear what you think about Jesus and then let them suggest other ways of thinking about things that you may not have considered? “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5).
And don’t leave out the Saints that have gone before. Those greats of church history have much to say about our day and our struggles if we take the time to listen.
Time: Experiencing God at work in and through us over time and in different situations is invaluable to understanding who he is. My mother used to tell me frequently, “Patience is a virtue, saith the Lord.”
“How long, Sovereign Lord?” is the cry of the believer struggling with the pain of a broken world (Rev. 6:10)—a brokenness that I know you understand. There is a sense in which all Christian prayer is the outflow of the longing for the end—for the day when we will see Him face-to-face. The day we will know Him in truth. But in the waiting we see Him.
The Good news? While we thought we were looking for him, the Good Shepherd was pursuing us: For thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out (Ezekiel 34:11). Christ wants to be known, so take heart, our searching for Him need not be in vain.