Some years ago, I was at a house blessing with several Christians, an atheistic Buddhist, some agnostics, and some Hindus. The focus, said the Hindu priest was to realize that we were all part of the same faith. We were blessing the house by emptying ourselves and embracing what unifies us all, that which welcomes us all: God.<\/p>\n
This upset me. I didn\u2019t know what to say. I wish I had responded better than angry tears.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t articulate what was wrong with what was going on (on multiple levels). The Holy Man was being exceedingly spiritual, saying a whole mess of spiritual things to embolden our human selves to yearn for the spiritual; it was all tremendously dehumanizing\u2014making one less than human.<\/p>\n
Dehumanizing how?<\/p>\n
Unfortunately in a way that Christians today have no problem with.<\/p>\n
We look at a passage like John 3:30 and see a perfect quote that is often used to depict that we are to become less as Christ becomes more. The Physical, is taught, doesn\u2019t matter: the Spiritual is what continues. But how does this differ from the Holy Man who called this \u201cGod\u201d the \u201cSpirit of Christ\u201d? The only difference is that one has been Christianized.<\/p>\n
Note John\u2019s words occur when he is baptizing in Aenon, near Salim (John 3:22). This event, John the Evangelist reminds us, happened before John was arrested. Now of course we know that John wouldn\u2019t have been arrested if he was out baptizing but it is likely because he knew about the accounts of the other Gospels which remind us very early in their text that John was arrested. (Mark 1:14; Matt 4:12-21; mentioned in Luke 3:19).<\/p>\n
This John, after the heyday of his ministry, but before being arrested, is faithfully continuing his work. He\u2019s already baptized Jesus (John 1). He\u2019s already pointed him out as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. But John is waiting while he is working.<\/p>\n
A discussion gets kicked up about purification and there\u2019s some spill-over. Apparently it had something to do with baptism since the disciple points out that Jesus\u2019 group is baptizing people and all are coming to Jesus rather than to John. Indeed, in the next chapter, the evangelist records that Jesus was baptizing more than John even though Jesus wasn\u2019t personally baptizing anyone (John 4:1).<\/p>\n
John\u2019s response is in three parts:<\/p>\n
Some years ago, I was at a house blessing with several Christians, an atheistic Buddhist, some agnostics, and some Hindus. The focus, said the Hindu priest was to realize that we were all part of the same faith. We were blessing the house by emptying ourselves and embracing what unifies us all, that which welcomes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,29,10,4],"tags":[711,710,712],"class_list":["post-2802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-history","category-israel","category-spirit","tag-increase","tag-john-330","tag-john-the-baptist"],"yoast_head":"\n