For some weeks now, I have been pondering Matthew 11.16-19, where Jesus says, “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: ‘We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”

My interest was spurred on by a sermon by Timothy Keller titled “Rejecting the Real Jesus” in which he interprets this passage in a remarkable manner. If you have reached this page, I highly recommend you click the earlier link and listen to this sermon.

The passage in Matthew 11 clearly indicates the power of unbelief. Jesus goes on to pronounce judgment on Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum – three towns in which he had done numerous miracles. However, despite these miracles, these grand displays of power, the people of these towns rejected Jesus and his message.

The problem is that we can always come up with some explanation to justify our unbelief. When John came, the problem was that he was too austere. But when Jesus came, the problem was that he wasn’t austere enough. Indeed, the religious authorities did not reject Jesus’ miracles. Rather, they accused him of colluding with Beelzebul, the prince of demons. When Jesus healed the man born blind, the religious leaders attempt to investigate the incident. They send some people to ask the formerly blind man about the incident. But when he testifies that Jesus had healed him, they accuse him of being a sinner. In other words, they do everything to try and explain away Jesus’ power.

The same attitude is revealed in the writings of David Hume. Hume argues that, since miracles are by definition [his definition] violations of natural laws, they cannot occur. And therefore, miracles have not occurred. But this is simply begging the question. And begging the question is something that all who refuse to engage with Jesus on his own terms do.

But as mentioned in the previous post, people will refuse to engage with Jesus on his own terms because they know what taking him at his word would imply. The sheer magnitude of grace offered by him would imply that we owe him everything.

And so with wonderful sleight of hand, they begin by saying, “Perhaps Jesus never existed and was only a figment of the imagination of the early Christians like Paul.” But the first century Jewish historian, Josephus, has a short paragraph in which he refers to Jesus. So people then say that Josephus is unreliable at this point even though he is a prime source for matters concerning the Jewish revolt in the late 60s! (The dispute about this paragraph makes for interesting reading. A brief overview of it can be found here and a phrase by phrase discussion of the paragraph here.)

Now faced with the fact that Jesus real did exist, what are those who reject him to do? Why, they can simply say that the Gospels do not contain Jesus’ words. So guilds like the Jesus Seminar even devised a method for deciding which parts of the Gospels were authentic and which were not that was laughable as a means for studying history and hugely flawed in terms of the mathematics behind it. All so that they could come up with a portrait of Jesus that conformed to their idea of who he should have been.

The problem, as I see it, is simple. We have the Gospels in their current forms. How did they come about? If we manage to displace the difficult sayings – the teaching about the kingdom of God, the miracles, the self-referential claims, and the like – from Jesus to the early church, then we are off the hook. After all, if Jesus didn’t say and do those things, then he cannot have any claim on our lives.

But we need to be able to account for the Gospels as they are. They present the first disciples in a very poor light, as men who failed to understand Jesus’ message and even at times opposed him. The Gospels also present an inaugurated eschatology the likes of which are not found prior to the Gospels themselves. Someone had to have thought of this. And if someone did, what was the historical event that forced such an idea on that person?

Further, unlike other messianic movements, the Jesus movement did not move its center to Jesus’ brother James following Jesus’ death. This is a strange thing since the logical, most common and natural thing to do when a leader dies is to install his nearest relative as the new leader. Why did this not happen in the case of Jesus?

Also, the Gospels claim that Jesus cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” Which person would have invented this? It shows Jesus in despair and claiming that God had forsaken him. Not quite the firm foundation on which to base a lie. And if the Gospels do not shy away from such a shameful utterance, it can only be because it must have happened.

But despite all of this, people will continue to reject the Gospels as reliable records of Jesus’ life. This is because unbelief is fueled by our desire to have control over our lives. We want to be self-determining beings even though we know that we can at best muddle through life. But the alternative to unbelief is belief – belief that the Gospels are reliable in their portrait of Jesus. The unbeliever knows what this means – complete surrender to a first century Jew! They’d rather pull out all the sophistry the can to not engage with him. For such is the power of unbelief.