Follow Jesus Christ

The apostles of Jesus who joined him at the beginning of his ministry believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah who would restore Israel’s power over the world. They imagined the Kingdom as a glorified dominion of the Jewish people with the Messiah on David’s throne. They had not signed…

Jesus in no way gave the impression of a man building a religion around death. He was constantly speaking about life, the Kingdom, freedom, trust, growth, fruit, light, children, birds, wildflowers, a feast, a wedding, a found sheep, a returning son, a treasure, new wine. His favorite images are remarkably…

Enoch is one of the Bible’s most mysterious figures. Remarkably little is said about him: “And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” The New Testament adds that Enoch was translated so that he “did not see death,” and that before this he received the…

People do not always think in words. Inner speech, images, sensations, and emotions are only the visible part of the processes that take place before a thought becomes conscious. You can imagine a person as a planet, most of which is hidden from their own observation. Consciousness is like the…

A bird does not reason about food in the abstract. It searches. It flies from place to place, watches the ground closely, rakes aside leaves, pecks at things, tests and rejects the inedible. Then it flies on. Hunger turns an inner need into action. As long as the bird lives,…

The teaching of Jesus can be viewed through a simple but revealing theme — time. In His parables almost nothing happens instantly. A seed goes into the ground, a tree slowly fills with fruit, leaven quietly transforms the whole dough, a disciple follows the Teacher, a house is raised stone…

Why didn’t Jesus write a single line? Why didn’t He allow the apostles to make written records of His words and deeds during His lifetime? We would now have twelve books by the apostles about Jesus. Or one, complete and magnificent, written by Jesus Himself. The rational route to Jesus…

Jesus did not create the church in the way we usually mean it. He intentionally left no religious hierarchy, did not establish a priestly caste, did not write bylaws and did not define the form of a future institution. On the contrary, his words were bluntly simple: “You are all…

Jesus taught about the formation of a person over time. His language was full of images of growth: a seed falls into the ground, sprouts, becomes a plant and bears fruit; the mustard seed grows; a vine branch must remain on the vine in order to bear fruit. In all…