This page contains my interpretations and views of a section of the book Becomming a Catechist by William J. O'Malley, entitled "Understanding Jesus". In his article O'Malley discusses common problems with people's views on Christianity, God, and Jesus. He begins with a few question for everyone about Christianity and proceeds to talk about where many people get their views of God from.
One of the first points made by O'Malley is that the majority of people do not get the descriptions of Jesus from the scriptures, but actually from the artworks they see in churches or from biblical movies.Even though depictions of Jesus are found in these sources they are all different, not even the gospels share a common identity for Jesus. I myself can say that this is true, when I immagine Jesus, or stop to think about him, normally I see pictures of satined glass windows from my church, or scenes from movies I have seen him depicted in. I think that many works of art, movies included, over due the divinity of Jesus and seem to leave out much of His humanity. After reading many sections of each gospel during school during sophomore and junior year, Its easy to see that his humanity is not always made clear, his images are drastically different from the viewpoint of John or Mark. I think it becomes easier to see when you try to not think about the theological or divine aspects of his works in the gospels, and think of him as a healer and teacher, which were common in his days.
I think O'Malley brings about a good point, when he addresses Jesus as the embodiment of God. This one of our key beliefs as Christians yet if we believe that, then our views of Jesus do not bring to truith to who he really was. If we assume our images of Jesus, from what we get out of movies and artwork, to be what he was really like, then we are beginning to deny the principle of his divinity as well as humanity. I think that as we begin to understand his humanity, we will then be able to truly understand his teachings. It seems as though alot of times we are like his apostles, or the people of Israel and Judea, dumbfounded by some of his teachings and miracles, or caught up in the theological aspects.
Click Here to Go Back to My Human Jesus Page
Click Here to Go Back to My Final Reflections