It’s day #1 of Christmas week at The Napkin Dad Daily!
When I first saw this quote I thought it said, “…if you CAN’T follow in his footsteps.” That fit in well with my feelings about Jesus as a man who taught vs Jesus as a mythic figure who was a God Man who did superhuman miracles. I like Jesus the man, I can follow in some of his footsteps no and then. I don’t have much in common with Jesus the God Man, I can’t follow in his footsteps.
But, the quote actually says, “…if you DON’T follow in his footsteps.” That implies it’s something you could do if you only chose to do it. And to wonder about that question in the first place you have to take Jesus walking on water literally. You have to believe he really did it and, in addition, that he wants you to do it too. That brings the idea to a whole new area of exploration.
So, here are my questions. Do you think that Jesus really did walk on water or no? If he did, then did he really want us to attempt that same thing? And if so, for what purpose? If he didn’t really walk on water, then what does the mythical story represent? What are we suppose to learn and enact from that story?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, being a bad example of a good man since 1976.
Quote by Anonymous. Actually, since it is anonymous I could have changed it to “can’t” and know one would have been the wiser! hmmm…
An additional way to see it is as a version of my favorite Russian toast: “Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela”–“Here’s to the success of our hopeless task.”
I believe that Jesus did walk on water. However, “walking on water” for us means stepping out in faith to do a seemingly impossible task. God asks us to partner with Him in His kingdom work on the earth; He supplies supernatural strength, wisdom and supply to those who will trust Him and take those first shakey steps. Peter was able to walk on water as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus; he began to sink only when his faith faltered and he attempted to walk in his own strength.
I don’t know if Jesus really walked on water or not. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. He was pretty remarkable…
I have enjoyed the challenge of understanding what it means to take a risk like trying to walk on water. For me it just means that we are quick to say “I can’t possibly do that” before we’ve actually tried. It means that in order to accomplish something outside of what we already know we can do, we have to be willing to “step out of the boat.” Taking one scary step, then another, then another is the only way to accomplish that which we have never done or imagined we could do before.
Michelle Lori
Okay, well so here’s maybe waaaay too much of an answer, but…
Guess the question it raises for me is not whether there is a supernatural spirit-world that God inhabits outside the material world, but whether we really understand what the material world is. In other words, that the matter-vs-spirit distinction we usually draw is just an artifact of how our brains work, or more precisely how our language works, creating polarities as a way of understanding things, and mistaking that polarization for something that actually exists. If we are “merely” matter, why do any of us matter? Why is it okay to shut down a computer but not ok to shut down a human being, if all they are is two different platforms for data processing, both of them at the most fundamental level made of the same bits of inanimate stuff? Conversely, if consciousness is what makes us matter (as I think), what does that say about the fundamental nature/purpose of matter, that all of these myriad interactions of bits of inanimate minerals, chemicals and whatnot give rise to the miracle (I think it is) of consciousness? If ultimately we are all just biological machines, what is it about us that makes it immoral to treat each other as such?
Theologically speaking, I think the point of it has to do with “metanoia”–usually translated as “repentance” but much much more profound than what we usually take that word to mean. “A radical reappraisal; a radical shift in understanding at the most fundamental level.” Whether it really happened as described, the point was that these witnesses experienced an encounter with a being who changed the very foundations of their understanding of the world they inhabited and themselves as moral beings. How to communicate—and in some way impart—that blissful yet awesome and even terrifying shock to those who haven’t experienced it is what it’s about, at least on one level.