SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan

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January 22, 2012

SEEING THE NEW PARADIGM by Tom Colgan I have been writing for weeks about the Jesus Paradigm. Sometimes, it feels like such delicate work. It seems necessary to approach the task like you would a brain operation. The movement of the scalpel must be slow and careful. The goal is to bring about a better condition, bringing new life and restoring vitality in a complex situation. But to open the brain and make changes is to enter the realm of risk, and every step needs to be carefully taken. To those observers, who have little background in what is being discussed, it must be scary and mysterious to talk about new directions. And walking along the paradigm road is putting yourself into one of the strongest and most powerful areas of our lives. The power of paradigms is to set the boundaries of what you understand to be true. The old existing paradigms can make us blind and paralysed to even be able to see the possibilities for making changes. But amazing change can come through the discovery of new paradigms that expand the perimeters of our thinking. The task is to be able to see and understand this new approach. It is difficult to see this new paradigm called the Jesus Paradigm. The paradigm is the essence of the new truths that Jesus proclaimed in his public ministry. 22/01/2012

SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan It is what he took seriously as his message to meet the needs of those he faced. But why is it so hard to see? It is difficult because the story of Jesus is only told in the gospels. It is a story told by others. The gospels are the foundation of our knowledge of what happened in the first century. In them we see and hear the stories that tell us about Jesus and things that were remembered about his ministry. But it is not Jesus telling us what the essence of his disclosure was to those to whom he ministered. The stories, in four different gospels, were written 40-70 years after the events. After this much time, much development had taken place in the movement, and all four of the gospels were proclamations about Jesus, sermons to tell others about his identity as the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world. Because these two concepts were their main purpose for writing, the substance of Jesus ministry, message, insights, and disclosures, now many decades in the past, are largely overshadowed and relegated to a secondary position of importance. The gospels emphasize the passion week and events, and proclaim Jesus as the divine Son of God, resurrected by God, whose passion activities provided a new salvation to the world and all of humanity. This emphasis on identity and purpose of events overshadows what Jesus was doing in his ministry, and what he was saying to the people that was making such a difference in their lives. This emphasis found in the gospels was the choice, the interpretation, and the understanding of the early leaders,

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan and has historically become the essence of the Christian faith, and is still the emphasis for tradition today. It is this situation that makes it so difficult to see the Jesus Paradigm. To see it and comprehend it, you almost have to get past the mighty power of tradition and the problem of paradigm blindness, for, at least, long enough to look again at the gospels and try to see what Jesus took seriously, and what his message was to the people, and then, see how the essence of his truths compare to what our essence of the faith has always been. What the Jesus Paradigm points out and the question it raises, is whether it is significant to aggressively seek out an understanding of what the Son of God would have taken seriously in an incarnational ministry as a human being living in a society that had religious laws as its main authority. Would the Son of God have had something important to say about how religion was working out as it interacted with the people it was trying to enlighten and govern? (The answer to this rhetorical question is so emphatically yes! ) We never quite grasp the incredible situation that Jesus, the Son of God, had a ministry, and said some absolutely remarkable things.

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan The problem is that we are not left with those written down statements. And, in trying to understand, we gravitate to proclaimed statements like in the gospel of John, that reflect the people's understanding of the divinity and presence of the living Christ in their lives 70 years after his ministry. John projects these understandings of truth, back onto the historical Jesus as he tells his story, implying that Jesus was the same earlier in his earthly ministry. In one sense, John is right, and certainly truthful. But, in another sense, it helps us miss what happened and what was disclosed to those who were impacted by his ministry before the passion events. It causes us to miss what is there in the synoptic gospels, that helps show us what Jesus took so seriously in his remarkable ministry. Since you can't read Jesus' proclamations, you must look at the evidence for what he was saying by the implications that abound. These implications come from compiling the facts about what the beliefs of that society were, and comparing them to what Jesus did. His actions show us how he felt about certain laws and truths. His teachings and presence show us how he disagreed with some of the understandings of his day. The implications of these disagreements are huge. They say so much about the characteristics of God, of God's love, and of God's involvement, accessibility, and availability. When put into the context of first century life and viewpoints, these new ways of seeing truth make an incredible difference

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan and you can begin to see and understand how his ministry would have evolved so rapidly, and with so much impact. Understanding what the Son of God would take seriously in a ministry to mostly outsiders and outcasts in the religious world of the first century, would seem to be an incredibly pregnant possible understanding for seeing and grasping, trying to catch a glimpse, and for making application to the people of today, and especially to those who would find themselves outside the church and religious world of today. What would God say to these people? If another incarnational event were to occur, what would be said? The remarkable ministry of Jesus with its implied understanding of reaching out in love to all the outcasts, would be a major starting point in speculating what would happen today if history repeated itself. Since Jesus left us with no known writings, and his withdrawal was so sudden and traumatic, there was, obviously, little preparation for transitional steps for his movement to continue. In retrospect, since the passion week and events became major impactors on our understanding and perspective of Jesus, it is not hard to realize why and how the events of his ministry that happened previously would slip into the background. And when they are mentioned, they are seen through the lens of later understandings. If we can get our head around the fact, that it is not heretical to find a different direction forward than the major thrust of the four gospel writers and all the early leaders of the movement in the beginning church,

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan and especially Paul, who provides much of the theological conclusions and understandings, we find ourselves confronted with an incredible new insight. It is not something new and original added to our ancient foundational documents. It is the discovering of what we have missed or overlooked, and what has been there all along. This discovery comes forward with the help of understanding how paradigms work, as a framework for all our understandings of what we see as truth. Paradigms are powerful controllers of our prejudices toward what is right and truthful, thus they are something that can make us blind to change and possibilities on the one hand, but they can also open up the ability to envision a new way of seeing things. Shifting paradigms allow entrenched beliefs to make progress to new perspectives that better answer problems and difficulties caused by the older veiwpoints. The Jesus Paradigm would be an attempt to catch a glimpse of what Jesus was trying to teach as a new way of understanding and relating to God's reality and presence. The success of Jesus ministry shows that people were listening to what he said and its truth was impacting their existence. These were people who were estranged from God, outcasts and outsiders, and yet, after hearing what Jesus proclaimed, they soon began to experience what Jesus lived out before them, which was God-closeness, the opposite of the problem of God-estrangement.

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan This problem, which they had been told and taught was impossible for them ever to overcome, was suddenly gone and existing no more. God's favor, which was so illusive among these people to whom Jesus chose to minister, was suddenly being shared in the lives of any who would respond and accept it. This active intermingling with the presence of the divine was a new paradigm, confronting an old paradigm that saw God as distant and unavailable. In a society where religous emphasis was on your status of purity, according to the purity laws, and where this status defined your possibilities of ever finding Gods favour, Jesus introduced new truths and new possibilities. So how do we begin to catch sight of this new paradigm that Jesus taught to those who were in his presence? How is it different than what we have seen before? The Jesus Paradigm is a paradigm about the possibility of God-closeness for all people. This is a condition that removes the problem of our separation from God, and the reality of God-estrangement that ends as the result. This is the truth that Jesus took seriously as the real hope for those who thought it could never happen. Jesus proclaimed it. And Jesus had to admit that this was a different message than what they were being told. It would have been a message that was opposite of all that even his hearers believed.

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan They had lived all of their lives under a different paradigm, a pre-existing standard that had taken away all of their hope. We can know this because we know why these people were considered outcasts. The ones hearing Jesus had to decide whether he was wrong (because he was saying something different than what they had been taught) or whether Jesus could be right and society, the priests, the temple rules, and all the scorn they had been shown for their whole lives was through a wrong set of truths being taught. Their decision to believe Jesus was accompanied by great transformations in many areas of their lives, including physical healing. This brought amazement and enthusiasm that caused his movement to grow rapidly on an amazing scale. But, how is this a new paradigm? Can our eyes still not behold a difference? Can we see yet, the remarkable nature of the truth of God-closeness that Jesus brought in his ministry to the people? How does it fit with the paradigm that we hold, today? And, first , how did it fit with the paradigm held by the Jewish authorities of Jesus' day? They held that God-closeness was probably an impossible thing for people. (On just one day of the year, the chief high priest enters the Holy of Holies, into the presence of God.) You were not to even say the name of God. God was too holy, and too beyond mere mortals. God's favour is what you want.

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan And to see how that is going, just look at your situation in life. If there is a major negative, God is responsible, and is showing disfavour. God-estrangement is caused by God, and is therefore impossible to correct or change. Into this kind of world Jesus brought his new paradigm. We, today, often hear the paradigm that separation from God, or God-estrangement is caused by our sinful nature and the sin that is in our lives. We are told the paradigm that Jesus takes away our sin and this God-estrangement because of his death on the cross. He was a sacrifice for our sins. And if we just believe this, he can become our saviour, and it can go away. Hopefully, it is replaced with a God-closeness that sees an intermingling of human and divine spirit. This paradigm of taking away our God-estrangement accomplishes the same ministry that Jesus seemed to be sharing with his new paradigms of truth. But there is a difference. This tradition has a focus upon the cross, and death, and sacrifice, and blood, and none of these were a part of what Jesus was sharing as he brought significant change to the lives of the people to whom he ministered. If our paradigm of the essence of Christianity, and what it is about involves believing in salvation acts of sacrificial death, and specifically on a cross by shedding blood, we are probably missing seeing the paradigm

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan of the availability and accessibility of God-closeness that Jesus taught and introduced that used as a foundation an awareness of the incredible magnitude of God's love for all humanity. A problem is that our traditional paradigm can be so entrenched that we are blind to the possibility that Jesus was teaching something even more remarkable than our old paradigm, which could easily be described as the best understanding and interpretation of the early Christian writers, but still something different than what Jesus was actually saying. God-estrangement is the problem. God-closeness is the possibility. Incredible, unconditional, universal, unending, and unlimited divine love was the resource that made it all possible. It was a transforming message brought by Jesus to those who needed it the most. It involved the introduction of the simple paradigm of God-closeness that removes and takes away our God-estrangement. It presupposed accepting God's incredible depth of love for each of us, and a knowledge of how this interaction can transform all parts of our lives. For todays world, seeing the Jesus Paradigm would only re-emphasize the importance of developing the human-divine relationship. It would involve allowing the presence of God to transform and change inner attitudes.

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan It would mean letting the Jesus Experience show the example of having a God-focus, letting yourself be God-directed, letting your life be God-centred, and realizing that living in the kingdom of God meant achieving God-closeness. Jesus had a message for the people of his day. It was really good news! It was hard to hear it, at first, and hard for them to believe what they were hearing. Most of them had thought that such a message would never come. But it did. Jesus disclosed new truths. He brought into play a game-changing paradigm of the accessibility and availability of God's love and presence, that could transform their lives. It would remove their problem of God-estrangement and give them a remarkable life-changing God-closeness. And all of this was something that could happen without any brokerage of any kind, without the temple, without the priests, without a brokering individual or institution. It was simple. It was real. People saw it have impact on others in the crowd. And very rapidly, Jesus became known as someone who was obviously close to God. He was sharing new truths, a new direction that opened up doors that had been previously closed. If you were in that first century society, you would have had to get your head past the paradigm of the temple sacrifices, the priests, and the strong control of purity laws

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan that governed a person's place, before you would have been able to hear any validity in the message of Jesus. These were all in place because they had been given by God to the Jewish people. The Torah and the Holy Scriptures were from God, and they explained and delineated the laws. It would have been easy to see Jesus as too radical, and certainly outside the understanding of divine truth found in the Scriptures. It was a new disclosure of truth. It was a new paradigm. It brought a paradigm shift that took away God-estrangement and brought into play a new radical experience of God-closeness. It (The Jesus Paradigm) does the same thing still today. Not everybody in the first century could see Jesus' work as a new direction. For many, especially those religious authorities who depended upon the brokerage concept, and who saw temple sacrifices for sin being challenged and threatened, Jesus had to be wrong! And his wrong truths could make him dangerous. And if the crowds continued to respond and expand, it could even cause disruptions and revolts that could change Rome's view of allowing the religious rulers to continue their governing. Jesus became a problem that needed to be disposed. The Jewish leaders told Pilate that Jesus was a problem. Pilate handled it swiftly and with all the might of Rome to make a point. Within hours of taking action, Jesus was dead. Obviously, the Jesus Paradigm was not easy for all to see in the first century. As incredible and dynamic, and life-changing as it was, there were many who suffered from paradigm blindness,

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan who thought they knew the truth already given by God in the Scriptures. For Jesus to claim new truths that didn't match up with their specific understanding, simply meant that he was wrong. They couldn't see the Jesus Paradigm. Can we see the Jesus Paradigm in the 21st century? It is very possible that the power of tradition holds such sway, today, that many traditionalists will never hear the Jesus Paradigm. To see the Christian faith as a relationship of God-closeness that has replaced your God-estrangement, because you have become aware of the availability and accessibility of God's incredible love and presence simply doesn't match up with the specific understandings of what many say you must believe and do. Like the first century religious authorities, people know that God has given truth in holy scriptures. They are like laws to be believed. And, if you believe the right laws, you put yourself in the right group. Your ticket is punched, and you have God's eternal approval. The main goal for some seems to be to do enough to escape eternal punishment. After your ticket is punched, and maybe a few more rituals undergone, your religious activity requirements are satisfied. It is not exactly a program of God-involvement and certainly not always does it result in any kind of God-closeness. But it fits within the essence of what makes up the Christian faith, for many people. Will anybody see the Jesus Paradigm in the 21st century?

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan Jesus didn't spend his efforts ministering to the religious people, the insiders of the first century. They were the ones who had the hardest time hearing him, and seeing his truths. He ministered to the outsiders, the outcasts, the ones who were able to see something different than the mainstream religion of the day. And, today, it is the most religiously certain disciples of their own specific denominational faith, who would have the most difficulty hearing the Jesus Paradigm, which seems to point a new and different direction again. The Jesus Paradigm would offer once more a challenge to dispense of the problem of God-estrangement, and allow the freeing and transforming situation of God-closeness to come into existence. Going back to the simpleness of Jesus disclosures of truth brings a new positive possibility of spiritual vitality, a promise held out to all people, even those outside the walls of the church. Those who would struggle to see and hear the Jesus Paradigm, would certainly not oppose the positive result of close relationship with God. They would simply declare that it must happen in a specific way and deny its reality outside the specific acceptance of certain doctrines. And those have been spelled out by God in Holy Scriptures, and interpreted, understood, and delineated by the leaders within their group that must be followed. Anyone who is outside of this strict thinking must be wrong. And could be dangerous.

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SEEING THE JESUS PARADIGM / Tom Colgan Tradition is not something to take lightly. The Jesus Paradigm... it is difficult for some to see this new paradigm that goes back to a very remarkable 1st century ministry. Remember...the Galilean!

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