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Know things better - On Jesus betrayel ...

Friday, March 10, 2017. Do you know things better than God? Often, we ask ourselves questions: if God exists, why does he not do x? Why does he not help against war? Why is there natural catastrophe? Why does he not create heaven on earth? And we draw our own conclusions, and act!

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As Judas …

Among the disciples of Jesus there was one, Judas, who has similar thoughts. He did not longer believe that the way Jesus acted was right. So at some point he acted. We hear about it in the gospels, let us look into the story as told by Matthew:

47 While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” 49 And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him. 50 Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.”6 Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him.

51 And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant7 of the high priest and cut off his ear. 52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” 55 At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. 56 But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled. (from Matthew 26)

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What about you? …

We had a long discussion of this point last evening in our youth group: where do I think I know better how God should act? What would I do if I were God? We had a large range of thoughts, for example: keep people from war. It is very interesting: you can formulate abstract tasks such as “let war be no more”. But how exactly would you do it?

As soon as you come with more concrete suggestions, you usually realize that they bear heavy side effects. For example: if you keep all people from doing bad things to others, you basically take away their freedom. You are like a little tyrant, who will not let things happen which do not fit into his idea of action.

The discussion we had in our youth group was kind of open. How do we understand Jesus in a better way. He chose the way to the cross - where we believe God should act as king immediately and end suffering. Perhaps, we are quite close to Judas? How can we gain more insight? We can ask God to give us wisdom. We can ask him to help us to understand his motives and his actions. The core tool is prayer, prayer, prayer! (Roland Potthast) ... more texts

jn_en_2017_03_10.txt · Last modified: 2017/06/18 16:48 by 127.0.0.1