College Union

Excerpts from E. Stanley Jones, MASTERY, week 5 and 6

 

But someone asks: Why Jesus? Why not go to God direct? Why a mediator at all? The answer is that no one goes to God direct. God has to be mediated to us. If you try to go to God direct, you go through the categories of your conceptions about God. Those conceptions of God mediate God to you. But they are not God – they are your conceptions about God. They are more or less false and more or less true – hence a false God.

Apart from Jesus we know little about God. Jesus is God disclosing Himself to us in understandable terms, human terms. He is the Divine self-disclosure. Jesus is not therefore a third Person standing between us and God. He is God come to you; and when you take hold of Jesus, you take hold of the very self of God. So Jesus is the mediator only in the sense that He mediates God to you…

 

We have been looking at the mastery of the eternal quest by the eternal finding. God cannot be found at the end of a syllogism – the way of logic and philosophy. Nor at the end of a laborious and costly sacrifice – the way of priesthood. Nor at the end of a long vigil of self-mutilation – the way of the mystic. Nor at the end of a long climb upward – the way of the seeker. He is found at the foot of the cross.

This is vividly portrayed in the words of “T.V.K.” the greatest living Tamil scholar. He has written more than sixty books, some of which have gone into twenty editions. He has now written a book which the Tamil literary critics say is his best. In the introduction he says:

 

Man somehow or other sins. He wants to get freedom from sin and suffering. The different religions of the world are attempts to wean men away from sin and give them freedom. But there is only one true way by which he can obtain his freedom from sin. That way is at the foot of the Cross where Christ is being nailed. Unless you are healed at the fountain there is no hope. I am not a Christian. No Christian padre ever taught me Christianity. Yet I tell you the truth. Go to the foot of the cross or perish

 

Then he goes on an in the first lines of the book and says:

 

I took delight in learning various languages, studying various religious and philosophies and in debating with everybody. In logic, in argument my opponents feared me and I was successful everywhere. But today I see a humble man stretched on the Cross and his enemies nailing him. This victim is saying: “Father, forgive them.” This was a new experience to me. At the sight of this, gone is all my debate. I am down…Various warlords drew their mighty swords and slew millions that they might live alone. They are all gone. Here is one who threw away the sword and was slain. He lives. Well, I have found the way to live. It lies at the feet of Him who was slain and yet lives.

 

So the eternal quest is not our search for God but God’s search for us. His quest and ours meet at the foot of the cross, where God finds us and we find Him. The eternal quest ends - ends in finding and being found.

Categories: Virtues & Choices
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