“Jesus is Real. How did we forget?” Brad Jersak

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“Jesus is real. How did we forget?” – Danielle Strickland –

Jesus is Real:

I have come to know that Jesus is real.

Note that I said “know.’
Not believe… as in an idea, an ideology, a doctrine, or a dogma.
I do believe in Jesus. But it’s more in the sense of trust.
And I trust Jesus because I have come to know him.
I don’t know him like I “know” Caesar or Napolean or other historical figures.
I know Jesus more like I trust that my wife loves me through our shared history.
I know Jesus through a lifetime of experiences in which Jesus is real to me.
I know Jesus as a living and present person with whom I am in communion.

Note that I also said “IS.”
Not was… as in Jesus was an actual historical figure.
Though I believe that too.
I believe in the rabbi-healer who walked the shores of Galilee.
I believe in the One crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem.
I believe in his resurrection, not because the tomb is empty but because he’s alive.
Now. I know the risen One because we’ve met and he is healing me.
He’s not an abstraction to me. I can’t even accurately say he’s invisible.
But he IS (not only was) real. Present tense.

Note that my “knowing” does not claim to be complete or undistorted.
I create projections, I see dimly in a fogged-up mirror, I delve into caricatures and constructs.
But my dim, foggy, mistaken constructs gesture to Someone Real.
He sees perfectly through all my veils, hears me, and sees me clearly and completely.
He knows me. Directly, experientially, intimately.
And he loves me.

I know the One who knows me is real.
What does “real” mean?
Maybe that regardless of my knowing, Jesus is alive.
Real even without me.
But also real to me in my experience.
More than a construct, more than a figment or fantasy or coping mechanism.
The work he’s done in me would take more faith to deny than to affirm.
My knowing is warranted.

Now, you may not know him that way.
That doesn’t make you less. It doesn’t make me more.
We’re all made and oriented and traveling on the diverse paths we’ve been given.
My way may not be better for you. It’s just what I’ve been given at this point.
And what I’ve been given is confidence through experience that Jesus is real.

How did we forget?

Danielle Strickland posed the opening monogram on X (formerly Twitter):
“Jesus is real. How did we forget?” I can think of five quick reasons.

  1. Jesus ceases to be real to us when we start acting and talking as if he’s not in the room, which is also to say, as if he’s not in us! When we speak of Jesus as if he’s only in the Bible or only in the first century or only in heaven or only coming again someday, we absence him from our immediate awareness of his immanent presence. He is (present tense) still here (present locale) but our way of thinking and talking about him blinds us to the truth that’s he’s here and now, with and in us.
  2. Jesus ceases to be real to us when we think we can’t know someone or something we can’t prove in a court (rationalism) or a laboratory (empiricism)… those restricted modernist ways of knowing can’t even explain love or grief beyond descriptions of how they affect our biology. If we reduce what or who is real to that sliver of materialistic knowledge, we can barely function socially, much less in an intimate relationship, much less trust in a God beyond those tiny boxes.
  3. Jesus ceases to be real to us when we think belief in the invisible is childish. We end up putting away Jesus with fantasy stories such as Peter Pan or the Tooth Fairy or toys like our GI Joes or Barbies. We may as well cash in our capacity for wonder, for intuition, for beauty… and many do. Small wonder that Jesus said, “Unless you become like these children, you won’t even enter the heavenly kingdom.” Not because that realm is not real. We’re just too big for our britches.
  4. Jesus ceases to be real to us when we think he’s an idea waiting for a better idea to come along. When we divorce the idea of Jesus from the reality of the living person, we may just be bored of the truth and pine for something novel, trendy, and flashy. We then gut his essence because who Jesus is, what he teaches, how he loves, etc. are indivisibly united in him and, therefore, our experience of him. But if we don’t know him in that personal and experiential register, we may begin to judge his ideas as too _____ or not _____ enough and move on next time life throws us an off-speed pitch that he doesn’t magically bat away for us.
  5. Jesus ceases to be real for us when we think he’s the cause of our pain, whether the malevolent will that generates it or the absentee landlord who abandoned us to it. We become disillusioned by the perceived distance between him and our affliction when, in reality, he bears our wounds in his own body… the ones we’ve endured and the ones we’ve inflicted. I’ve come to know that Jesus is real because our wounds appear in his wounds. When I remember that, I don’t forget that Jesus is real.

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