Follow Jesus Christ

The greatest difficulty in understanding the person of Jesus begins with a simple but uncomfortable question: “Do I really need this?” Official theology tends to emphasize the significance of Jesus’ atoning death on Golgotha more than the necessity of knowing Jesus as a person. Atonement, Christians argue, matters for the forgiveness of sins and for justification. But what practical significance does knowing Jesus as a person have? At best an “educational” one—serving as a moral example?

From there the mind of the average Christian hesitantly and curiously turns to the Gospel scenes where one can at least roughly see Jesus “in action.” Many of Christ’s sayings seem enigmatic, as if shrouded in a fog of uncertainty. The accounts of his birth, childhood, baptism and numerous healings often give the reader not a clear psychological portrait but a set of “sacred” facts. And then many people find the scene of driving the merchants out of the temple convenient for understanding Jesus’ “unmasked” personality. In an extreme situation, they reason, character is revealed most clearly; therefore Jesus expresses Himself through anger—righteous, of course, but anger nonetheless.

The presence of anger in Jesus makes people feel a closeness: “He’s like us; He has emotions too.” But at the same time this conflicts with an image of mercy, forgiveness, and the call to “turn the other cheek.” How to reconcile what seems incompatible? Either Jesus is a pacifist and a soft-hearted “nice guy,” or He gets angry and justly consigns bad people to hell. Many likely end their search for the “historical Jesus” at this contradiction, preferring to focus on Jesus’ sufferings as the primary proof of personal redemption. It’s easier that way.

But why does analyzing the temple scene automatically reduce to the idea of Christ “losing it” and having poorly controlled emotions? Jesus was teaching in the temple during a Jewish festival when thousands were gathered in the courtyard. There were no microphones or amplifiers then; Jesus relied on the power of His voice. Add the noise of the crowd, and you have a situation in which any sermon requires order. That’s when the merchants and moneychangers come into play: haggling with customers, the clink of coins, the lowing and bleating of animals that sense alarm and danger. Clearly, all this destroyed the very possibility of hearing the teaching.

The key point is that thousands watched Jesus’ every word and gesture. He simply could not afford to “lose it” and act without regard for the consequences. Every action was under a magnifying glass. When the noise reached a limit, Jesus could fall silent, look around, and calmly—without hysteria—go into the animal pens, open the enclosures and drive them out. Then He could just as calmly, confidently and publicly—perhaps accompanied by several hundred listeners—address the merchants and ask them to leave the temple grounds. If they refused, overturning a table might not have been a burst of fury but a clear, demonstrative act: “This is not a marketplace. This is a place of prayer and teaching.” Around Him were people who had not come to waste their time on moneychangers and trade but to hear instruction in the faith.

So was Jesus angry? Was He indignant? Yes. But most likely that anger was “cut” by reason and dignity—contained, with inner composure and careful psychological judgment. The mistake we often make sounds like this: “If I see evil, I must feel it inside me.” By that logic we automatically attribute to Jesus a need to emotionally “let evil in” in order to have the right to confront it. But one can recognize evil, call it evil and act against it without identifying with it emotionally. Negativity, anger and intolerance need not become the internal fuel of our souls: we don’t have to become the world’s garbage cans. Most likely Jesus did not make evil an internal part of His life: He did not allow destructive emotions to take up residence in Him, yet He knew how to oppose evil in appropriate, cultured and effective ways. He drove the merchants from the temple not by a “fit” but by the force of His authority, clarity, and the support of those who had come to hear His word.

That is why we should seek the person of Jesus more earnestly—not as a collection of religious slogans or mystical experiences, but as a living reality capable of giving a person genuine, true psychological healing. We should not retreat into the fog of “special states,” nor replace an encounter with Him by emotional substitutes, but look more attentively at His speech, style of relationships, inner freedom and clear-headedness. In this search there is not a flight into mysticism but a return to the One who heals from within: through truth, clarity and love that do not destroy but gather the person into wholeness. Such healing growth in following the Teacher is, in fact, the salvation of the human soul.