It must have challenged many abused persons in Jesus’ day to even consider turning the other cheek when struck in anger or going the second mile after being conscripted to carry an occupying Roman soldier’s baggage. Nevertheless, such seldom seen and counter-intuitive behavior is the only successful way of snuffing out quarrels and avoiding escalating conflicts. Spiritual love, along with an abiding faith in God and hope for a satisfying existence through a Christ-centered life-style, can lead maturing believers toward sound Christian discipleship. The church itself came into existence through faith, hope and love which are crucial to each person’s healthy psychospiritual development. From the earliest days of Christianity, the crucial love factor was present in everything Jesus accomplished as he healed sick bodies, calmed anxious minds and restored wounded souls across Galilee and Judea. Jesus’ interpersonal ministry was so appealing that he captivated the hearts and minds of the multitudes who flocked to hear his good news about the gracious God who loved deeply and connected warmly with persons of faith and good will. It had to have been awe inspiring to learn from Jesus personally that each man and woman could relate to and commune freely with the Lord God of the Cosmos. The people no longer had to humble themselves before and pay their precious bronze coins to narcissistic priests that guarded the Temple gate and determined who would be acceptable to God and who would be excluded from the Lord’s family. Of course, the Gospel is still wonderful for persons who focus their lives spiritually through God’s freely bestowed grace.
One significant concept of ours should quickly become obvious to the reader. This isn’t a simple little love Jesus and be nice homily for casual Christians. We get down into the mud and blood of life in an age of free floating anxiety, existential frustration and spiritual bankruptcy. We, the authors, have discovered that the best way to mature psychophysically and psychospiritually is to combine faith and facts, wisdom and knowledge, theology and psychology and worship and therapy into a functioning whole. Then we can make our way to the mountaintop of Christianity with Jesus who was quite obviously the first and foremost existential or life-style oriented Logotherapist.
The consistent response of Jesus’ passionate crowds were -- never has a rabbi spoken to us as this teacher does. Indeed, Jesus’ charismatic love and his message of spiritual deliverance and maturity were so compelling that scores of men and women left their homes for weeks at a time to learn from the Master how to live wisely and well. They came to find relief from sin and evil, from guilt and despair and even to transcend death, in order to follow his way of life that was so satisfying that people wanted it to last forever. They sought forgiveness from their human inadequacies and guilt feelings. And Jesus’ ministry was so relevant that two thousand years later, multitudes still come for deliverance.
Some years ago we revised two of our study courses, THE PASTOR’S HANDBOOK ON INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS and THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WITNESSING, both of which have been offered under new titles in our FULFILLMENT FORUM book list and THE DeVILLE LOGOTHERAPY LEARNING CENTER curriculum. These books formed the Seventh-day Adventist FRIENDSHIP EVANGELISM program. And while we would like to take full credit for that evangelistic success, it was a mutual venture. While the devout Christians of their fellowship went into the fields that are white unto the harvest, we produced the materials they needed to baptize more than a million new Christians every year.
Obviously, we are deeply pleased with our contribution to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ! Liberation from the secular to the spiritual, from uncertainty to hope, from isolation into a loving faith community -- can be so emotionally transforming that Jesus called it being born anew. At the very least, repentance and redemption is a situation from which we can began all over again! Passionate disciples have been redeemed by the great Jehovah and they know it! When a person connects with the Cosmic Creator through Jesus’ spiritual revelation, he or she moves into a grand and glorious fellowship in which God’s highest principles come into operation. We understand that each worshipper who enters God’s family becomes an heir to the Seminal Spirit; a joint heir with the Lord Jesus Christ and one can hardly aspire to anything more significant than that. For committed Christians, a meaningful life in a loving faith community can and should be accompanied by grand psychospiritual experiences that bring consistent times of joy to passionate believers.
Jesus’ existential message of peace and love was especially valuable at his place and time when life for ordinary men and women was consistently difficult, was hand to mouth for the laboring multitudes in the occupied lands. Indeed, much of Jesus’ message flew directly into the face of conventional human wisdom across the wicked Roman Empire with its fixation on violence and death. Virtually everything in the Empire, from its use of abortion as birth control, to child abandonment and death matches in the arenas with thumbs down for defeated gladiators, crucifixion for executions and frequent suicides for disappointed lovers, failed business owners, unsuccessful politicians and generals -- revolved around pain and death. We frequently think that the early Christians despised the Romans because of their casual sexual relations but the dread of the conquerors actually came from the way they ruled the Empire through punishment and executions. After the final defeat of Spartacus’ revolting slaves, the double line of crucified bodies every few yards along the Appian Way stretched for many miles from Rome’s gates to the sea. It was an object lesson few surly slaves missed.
And yet, despite its cruel methods -- the Empire unintentionally made the swift spread of the Gospel possible. Roman law and order, the harsh Pax Romana, provided a network of superb all weather roads, wayside inns, water viaducts and few if any bureaucratic travel restrictions. A family could load a donkey cart with food and water and travel safely through the Empire. There were banking services, blacksmith shops, wheel and wagon wrights, clothes markets, fleets of commercial ships that roamed the Mediterranean Sea with trade goods and passengers and a reliable mail service. Only since the advent of the European Union during the authors’ lives, have the border restrictions created by passports, visas and border inspections fallen to the level of the Roman Empire. Jesus and the Gospel message indeed did arrive in the fullness of time for its swift spread and acceptance by multitudes across the Roman world.
Obviously -- it wasn’t only the poor people who had little to lose that came to trust the Gospel. Scholarly Pharisees of the Sanhedrim and wealthy Saducees, Hebrew and Roman warriors, some of them members of the emperor’s own Praetorian Palace Guard and even Roman princesses of the royal household, abandoned a secular existence to embrace God’s spiritual life-style. They had been transformed and because they were reborn with spiritual attitudes and expectations that reflected their new state, life was never again the same for committed Christians. They had become God’s people despite the resentment and resistance of some Hebrew and Roman aristocrats who had vested interests in maintaining the narcissistic status quo.
It must have challenged many abused persons of Jesus’ day to even consider turning the other cheek when struck in anger or going the second mile when conscripted to carry an occupying Roman soldier’s baggage. Nevertheless, such unheard of and counter-intuitive behavior was the only successful way of snuffing out quarrels and avoiding escalating conflicts. Someone had to be mature enough to take the initiative in peace making and who better than Christians? In our era, when significant portions of Jesus’ bold existential message have been internalized into justice, educational, social service and health care systems, life typically becomes more satisfying for a great many families.
It was centuries later -- during another period of many narcissistic abuses and moral compromises within the aristocratic Anglican state church, when British royals, landlords and military officers treated their dogs far better than their subordinates, that Charles Wesley -- the poet laureate of early Methodism, wrote;
Jesus lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly.
While the neither waters roll,
When the tempest still is high.
And:
Love divine -- all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down.
Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
All thy faithful mercies crown.
Then, John Newton, the bloody handed slave trader whose conscience could no longer justify his savage life style, repented his sins and prayed for God’s forgiveness. After his dark soul was redeemed, Newton composed what has arguably become America’s best loved gospel song. It is especially appropriate that AMAZING GRACE came from the reborn heart and soul of a wicked Blackbirder -- a slave ship captain -- who profited from dire and often fatal human misery. Newton had been wounded in his selfish soul by the universal quartet of suffering, rage, guilt and death that bedevils all persons to a greater or lesser degree. And although few of us are as wretched as a slave dealer -- humans do indeed have many spiritual virtues and values -- we also have dark aspects to our souls that make us vulnerable to self-loathing emotions. Only in Christ’s love can we humans overcome our simmering homosapien angst to become maturing disciples.
Recognition of our human shortcomings and failings is why so many people intuitively respond to John Newton’s verses about our wretched human attitudes and our spiritual blindness. Deep in our homosapien souls we are forced to admit that despite all our illusions and delusions of our own superiority and righteousness, the liberated slave ship captain saw unredeemed men and women as guilt burdened humans really are.
Newton left a superb description of God’s grace and human salvation in his poetic testimonial. Newton’s message of peace and love still resonates in the hearts and minds of multitudes of passionate Christian souls.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found;
Was blind but now I see.
T’was grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed.
SELF FOCUS ONE:
Tell in a short paragraph of three or four sentences why you think the Gospel had such an appeal to people of all classes and nationalities.
