The Gospels

Since I've continually been exposed to the Gospels since Sunday school when I was, say, 4 or 5, I decided to do something a little different for these books instead of picking out parts of them to comment on. Because, frankly, I'm sick of them (also due to the fact that our Pastor just finished a 4-year-long series on Matthew not long ago...4 years...just talking about Matthew. Verse by verse. So you can understand that I didn't want to read it again...). So I decided to write about the synoptic gospels as a whole.

One thing I've noticed in places like cartoons, on tv, ect. is that a lot of people poke fun at the miraculous conception of Mary. As a Christian, this is somewhat insulting to me, that people assume that Mary committed an indiscretion then tried to cover it up with God. Why couldn't Mary have been immaculately impregnated? Stranger things have happened in our world. And why do people poke fun at Christians? I don't see anyone poking fun at Buddhists for their gods, or poking fun at Mormons or Muslims for their prophets. Sometimes I get tired of the cynicism that our country has bought into. Are we really so jaded that we can't believe God made a child?

Another round of evidence that I've seen people use against Jesus is that Mary doesn't count as a line to David because she is a woman. People forget that the line passed through Ruth to get to David first. Actually, today, children born to a Jewish mother are automatically Jewish, even if the father is not Jewish, but they are not if they are born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. So the line can also be matriarchal, making Jesus a direct descendant of David through Mary.

The Da Vinci Code has really taken a toll on serious spiritual scholars in America, in my opinion. The public reads a book with no historical or scientific background whatsoever, and believes it to be truth. Scholarly debate challenging traditional beliefs about Christianity is just fine, because extensive research has been done and evidence found. Writing a novel borders on blasphemy and encouraging people to believe that you didn't just make it up is an entirely different story. The Da Vinci Code has not only made the point that the savior of a widespread religion was actually not sinless at all (one of the fundamental points of Christianity), but that a man and a woman cannot have a platonic relationship. If Jesus and Mary Magdalene cannot have a relationship without sex, than neither can anyone else.

Going off of that point, it seems like in Biblical discussion, Mary Magdalene never gets a fair shake. Thanks to the Da Vinci code, she is now seen in one of two ways: as Jesus' ex-hooker baby mama, or as a random person who didn't do anything and who nobody cared about. Yes, Jesus loved Mary Magdalene. In John 19:26, it says: "Jesus therefore saw His Mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing by." The disciple he is talking about, as we learn from the previous verse, is Mary Magdalene. She, his mother, a few other women, and a man called Joseph of Arimathea were the only ones present through his entire crucifixion; the rest of the disciples were too afraid to be there. Also, after he was crucified, it was Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Joseph of Arimathea who prepared his body for burial. Mary Magdalene was also the first one to see Jesus resurrected. Though she is not quoted or mentioned much in the Bible, we can see just from her actions and what happened to her that she was a very important disciple. However, Jesus could not have had a child with her. That would have been fornication; the Bible says time and time again that Jesus was sinless.

I guess I'd better wrap it up; I'll probably have more to rant about soon enough.