Reading A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jesus by Bruce N. Fisk has really been an eye-opening experience for me. Before I started reading it, I was somewhat worried about how it would affect me and if it would challenge my faith. C.S. Lewis summed up my feelings exactly in the passage from The Screwtape Letters (40-41). I thought that studying the Historical Jesus would inspire doubts within me that would cause me to lose faith in God, Jesus, and Christianity altogether. I will admit that during parts of this book I did begin to doubt everything that I thought I knew. However, instead of weakening my faith, as I progressed through the book, my faith actually became stronger. Being able to personally study the historical aspect of the life of Jesus was a really rewarding experience. It is so much more meaningful to learn something on your own than to sit in a pew and listen to some person tell you the “truth” and what you should believe.
Even as a “Sunday School Graduate,” I learned so many things from this book that I never heard of growing up in church. In a world of endless uncertainty, Christians want Christianity to be a firm and unchanging source of confidence. However, as I learned from this book, we must always keep in mind that the books in the Bible were written and compiled by humans. Therefore, there will be imperfections and disagreements among the Gospels. Often, Christianity tries to cover up these differences by creating some elaborate story that makes all the different Gospel accounts true or by just ignoring it all together. Norm argues that “sometimes we show the Gospels more respect by letting tensions stand or by suspending judgment than by hiding behind sketchy harmonization” (221). We must also remember when reading the Gospels that each author had a different perspective, motive, and therefore interpretation of the events that took place. Each Gospel writer had a different intention while writing and portrayed Jesus in an entirely different light. As a result, it is to be expected that there would be differences among them.
Overall what I gained from reading this book is that the Gospels are interpretations so we shouldn’t just view them as pure fact. The Gospel writers didn’t necessarily have the intention of giving us a “historical Jesus.” Rather, they wanted the readers to believe what they believed and see Jesus in the same light that they saw him in.
Even as a “Sunday School Graduate,” I learned so many things from this book that I never heard of growing up in church. In a world of endless uncertainty, Christians want Christianity to be a firm and unchanging source of confidence. However, as I learned from this book, we must always keep in mind that the books in the Bible were written and compiled by humans. Therefore, there will be imperfections and disagreements among the Gospels. Often, Christianity tries to cover up these differences by creating some elaborate story that makes all the different Gospel accounts true or by just ignoring it all together. Norm argues that “sometimes we show the Gospels more respect by letting tensions stand or by suspending judgment than by hiding behind sketchy harmonization” (221). We must also remember when reading the Gospels that each author had a different perspective, motive, and therefore interpretation of the events that took place. Each Gospel writer had a different intention while writing and portrayed Jesus in an entirely different light. As a result, it is to be expected that there would be differences among them.
Overall what I gained from reading this book is that the Gospels are interpretations so we shouldn’t just view them as pure fact. The Gospel writers didn’t necessarily have the intention of giving us a “historical Jesus.” Rather, they wanted the readers to believe what they believed and see Jesus in the same light that they saw him in.
RSS Feed