Death of Jesus: Part 3 of 4

This brings us to our second major lens on the meaning of the death of Jesus

Moral Influence
CS Lewis, among others, wrote a lot about this concept I’m calling moral influence. Lewis described the very appearance of a moral objective standard as an argument for God. At the same time his belief was that this appeal to an objective moral standard could not be explained as mere instinct, because it does not always win out, nor as mere social convention, because it appears to transcend and is appealed to across cultural divides, nor as a law of nature because the very idea of morality is prescriptive for our world rather than descriptive of our world. Therefore he argued that morality, in and of itself, points us towards not only God, but his intervention into the human story. Jesus steps into that story to bring us a more full picture of what a human life can be. This divine example of humanity becomes an influence on us of unequaled proportion. In fact, Jesus demonstration in his life and in his death is so perfect, and so powerful that it has altering effect on the course of human history helping to point us towards God.
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Death of Jesus: Part 1 of 4

I taught a session last week on the death of Jesus as part of our Backstory curriculum.

Since then a number of people have asked for the audio and/or notes so I figured I would rework the info into an article for the blog… then I remembered that I have my regular job/writing to keep up with. I still think it’s a good idea (for my own personal thought as much as anything else) but I need a bit more time to put the information into proper(ish) sentences… so I’m going to be posting it in pieces over the next week or so as I go.

Hopefully it can help shape a different (or at least broader) frame on Jesus life and death than the sometimes myopic view presented in the evangelical church.

Intro
There are a number of traditions in the family of the Christian Church and each of those have placed a different emphasis on parts of the life of Jesus. The Eastern Orthodox church has primarily focused on the birth of Jesus – his entry into the world as the focal point for their theology. The Roman Catholic Church has built much of their emphasis around the resurrection, that fact that he died and came back to life as their focus. The protestant tradition which is where Westside has come out of, by contrast, has primarily focused their attention around the death of Jesus. Of course none of things can really be separated off in a meaningful way, because they were all a part of the story of Jesus.
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un’writ.ten

[transcription from the first message of our fall series at un'ed.i.ted spirituality]
Wikipedia – as far as I’m concerned, is the final store of all human knowledge

It is the intellectual equivalent of a flash mob for me

Hundreds upon thousands of individuals contributing their part to a story bigger than any person could write on their own
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