Why Secondhand Answers Are Not Enough
Day 4 of 365 · Episode 1 — The Question You Cannot Avoid
“Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
The answers surrounding Jesus were diverse, sincere, and inadequate. That should sound familiar.
People still inherit portraits of Jesus from families, churches, critics, politics, entertainment, painful experiences, and cultural assumptions. Some portraits are reverent. Some are hostile. Some make Jesus useful to a cause. Others make Him easy to ignore.
A Secondhand Jesus Is Easier to Control
If Jesus is only what another person told us, we can accept or reject Him without ever listening to Him. We can confuse the failures of His followers with the character of Christ. We can confuse religious customs with His commands. We can condemn a distorted version of Jesus while leaving the Jesus of the Gospels unexamined.
Jesus’ question disrupts that distance: “But who do you say that I am?”
He does not permit the disciples to hide inside the crowd’s uncertainty. They have encountered Him. They must answer from what they have heard and seen.
Faith Is Not Mere Inheritance
A Christian family can teach you about Jesus, but it cannot believe for you. A church can read His words publicly, but attendance cannot answer His question. A skeptical culture can give you reasons for doubt, but its confidence does not relieve you of examining the evidence.
The issue is not whether influences exist; everyone has them. The issue is whether those influences are permitted to speak more loudly than Jesus.
Return to the Source
The purpose of this journey is not to remove interpretation by pretending we have no assumptions. It is to place the primary witness in front of us: what Jesus said, what He did, how people responded, why He died, and whether He rose.
You may have good reasons for caution. You may have been harmed by religious people. You may have unanswered intellectual questions. Jesus’ question does not require you to deny any of that. It requires you to ensure that the person you are evaluating is actually Jesus.
Do not settle for what admirers, opponents, institutions, or algorithms say about Him. Listen to Jesus within the Gospel accounts. Then answer the question He asks.
Consider this
Are you rejecting or accepting Jesus Himself—or only reacting to a version of Him supplied by someone else?
Respond
Separate Jesus from the people and institutions that may have represented Him poorly. Commit to examining the Gospel witness directly.
