“I am the way, the truth, and the light, no one comes to the Father but through me.” These are rather blunt words that people who have come in contact with Christianity may have at some point heard. Unfortunately, these words spoken by Jesus have been twisted to represent something that I don’t think they were meant to.
The Evangelical Christian way of interpreting this verse has been with the mindset of Jesus being the only way in which we can come to the “Father.” In other words, Jesus is our keycard into eternity with some God somewhere else. Not only is this a rather domineering perspective on Christ, it also closes people off from the encounter with beauty other perspectives can offer. Furthermore, I believe this is a complete misreading of the passage and in this post I aim to relay what I think Christ really meant when he said this.
In the verse before this one, Jesus' disciple Thomas asks Jesus the driving question. How can we know they way to God? This is a question a lot of us have at some point. We want to have a path to follow, a blueprint that outlines our best course of action. To side track a bit, Thomas’ question just goes to show how incredibly human the Bible is. It’s a book about humans who have a lot of the same questions we all do. Jesus offers an answer to Thomas’s question about life by pointing to himself.
“Thomas,” Jesus says “I am the the way. I am the truth. I’m the life. The life that represents all those things. All the things that the father is defined by, I represent. Because of this I am your way to the father. When you understand the ways in which I act and what I represent, then you can see the ways and characteristics of the father. Then your cataracts will be peeled away.”
Jesus could care less if Thomas were to accept him, he wants Thomas and all of us to know him. To know his ways, to know the life he represented, to be in tune with his truth. To accept is meaningless, it offers no real life change. But to know… to know is to encounter, and to be involved with something on an intimate and personal level.
This is all good and wonderful, but I think for truths to hold significance, they have to be attached to objective and applicable realities. With that being said, lets talk about gardens.
Gardens are a wonderful representation of diverse beauty. Yet through all their diversity, there is one thing that remains constant in every garden in order for life to be sustainable. Soil. Without soil, a tulip cannot bloom, cherry trees cannot blossom. Soil is the foundation of all the beauty around us.
I like to view John 14:6, the passage above, with gardens in mind. Just as the soil in a garden is the foundation of the beauty, so Jesus represents the foundation of truth and life. When we recognize this about Jesus, we see God in all things that are tied to those ways and that truth. When we recognize the soil, we recognize what is tied to it by looking at the flowers a garden holds.
Jesus is the foundation of beauty, however he need not be the only beauty. The ways of Jesus are the ways of God. The soil is in many ways the pulse of the garden. However, what makes a garden beautiful is the diversity that the pulse creates. The fruits of God are everywhere, and they can on the surface appear vastly different. A garden has many different colors and many different scents, but it’s all tied to the same soil, even if at times we aren’t consciously aware of the soils role. To focus strictly on the soil limits the recognition of what the soil is actually doing. To put strict focus on only Jesus limits the potential of what God is doing through Jesus' characteristics all around us.
The ways, truth, and life Jesus represents are the same that the insistent God represents. As Jesus says later in the passage, he and God are one in the same. Jesus is the image or physical manifestation of the characteristics that define what an invisible insistence is doing. Wherever the traits of Christ are found is a place that God is actively engaged in, even if Jesus isn’t consciously tied to that reality.
If all this is true, that means we can encounter God all around us. Things that are tied to love, a recognition of something more going on, and justness are all things tied to the garden of God do to them sharing the characteristics of Christ. So where in your life is this garden bursting forth and how can you be open to encountering that even more?
A Noah Gundersen song that I’ll attach a link to at the bottom comes to mind when thinking of about this. The chorus states, “But wait, oh wait. See how the morning breaks, it’s the simplest of love songs but it’s all our hearts can take. Though we may lose our stake, heaven is where we make it. Even in the smallest of places, can a garden grow.”
A Noah Gundersen song that I’ll attach a link to at the bottom comes to mind when thinking of about this. The chorus states, “But wait, oh wait. See how the morning breaks, it’s the simplest of love songs but it’s all our hearts can take. Though we may lose our stake, heaven is where we make it. Even in the smallest of places, can a garden grow.”
The beauty of the garden of God is all around us, we just need to open ourselves up to that possibility. To know the ways, truth, and life of Jesus gives us a blueprint into knowing the ways truth and life of an insistent God. This in turn opens us up to the potential of everything all around us.
To close, I want to offer a parable for any of you who are like me and grew incredibly exhausted of the language of Jesus being a man tied to deity and being a life giving being…
There once was a man who refused to associate himself with soil in his garden. He hired a hand, a young man not knowing much about gardening, to till the soil for him and plant flowers. The boy did as he was told day after day in the hot sun of summer. But one afternoon, the boy decided to ask the man why he despised soil so much. The man replied that when he was young, his father was obsessive about his garden and had made him plant all the flowers. Throughout his youth, he began to associate soil with long hot days where he couldn't do anything he desired to do because he was forced to work in the garden. He loved the garden, and found it beautiful, but the heat of the day combined with the messiness of dirt made him hate soil. The boy said to the man, "Yes, I see how that could be troubling. But when you see the soil for what it really is, rather than associating it with what is was forced to be to you, you see a whole new potential." The man asked the boy what he meant. "Well, you see, the soil is the pulse of the garden. It's what allows all the characteristics that you love about it come into being. With it flowers can become beautiful, and smell sweet. Without the soil, life in the garden wouldn't thrive, but with it, it can be fruitful and diverse." At this the old man realized the connection and larger system the soil was tied to, and was able to see the soil in a whole new light that was tied to the life of the whole garden rather than something that was a forced tie to his youth.
Jesus can be something that is forced on us when we are young. When that happens, he lacks potential in our mind. We grow sick of him. But Jesus is not some guy trying to merely grant us access to life somewhere else when we die. He’s someone calling us to recognize the life all around us here and now. He’s producing gardens with a vast array of flowers. Flowers that may be tied to other worldview’s. Flowers tied to scientific advancement. Flowers tied to things that some may say are”secular.” He is the foundation to all the beauty and goodness, for he gives us a blueprint to what beauty and goodness look like.
Noah Gundersen- Garden
No comments:
Post a Comment