Letters to Jesus (Church, Religion, and Sacraments)-4
4.
Dear Jesus,
We Christians are so imbued with the history and traditions of the movement that followed upon Your life and death 2000 years ago that seldom, if at all, do we reflect on our condition had You never come at all. For one thing, there’d probably be a whole lot more of us who are Jewish and, consequently, still waiting for Your coming.
If You never came, Christianity would never have even been a notion. We would have been left on our own these 2000 years to work out the meanings of life, death, and love. Furthermore, what would be our relationship with God without any connection but the Old Testament prophets? Of course we could accept Mohammed as our connection and embrace Islam. In that case, we would not be waiting for You at all.
Without You the human spirit takes on some very different shades. We need to be connected with God. The prophets and messengers of historical Judaism and Islam are, each in their own way, connections to the one God. But they are not the connection You are. Thus, if we had no knowledge whatsoever of You, would we not feel one of these other historic traditions as our true connection to God? Of course we would.The Spirit of God in us would still drive us to seek our destiny. Islam, then, might even have a stronger attraction than Judaism for its more clearly defined notion of heaven and an afterlife.
If You had never come, who knows what other monotheistic religions might have arisen through the centuries. With great power the Spirit moves our unguided wills. Without You we still would have pursued God. But without You and Your teachings about life, without the example of Your life, and without Your directly connecting us with the Father via the cross it would have been at best a stumbling affair.
To a Christian it is so eminently clear that the way to connect with God is in You, with You, and through You.
