Another Jesus Manifesto...

While looking up some stuff for the other Jesus Manifesto  post, I came upon a book..in its entirety as a PDF file.... called The Jesus Manifesto.  It is written by by John Edmiston. In the title it is described as:

How To Live In The Kingdom Of God

An exposition of the Sermon On The Mount

Glancing through it, it seems interesting and well written, with practical suggestions for living out the sermon of the Mount theology in our modern day world. 

For example, on turning the other cheek he says:

Non-Resistance
Jesus continues with verse (39) “But I tell you not to resist an evil person.”

Now what does this mean? Does it mean that policemen should not arrest drug dealers? Should we hand the keys to Fort Knox to burglars? Should we let terrorists run loose?

Not at all! This verse is not meant to be interpreted in such a literal fashion! Jesus is talking about inner resistance or spiritual resistance or reactivity.

Jesus is saying: “Do not let evil press your buttons. Do not fly into a rage. Do not get into a lather and desire to sue people or to take revenge, don’t let evil make you ugly and hateful and bitter and vengeful.”

The natural man is ensnared in the instinctive, adrenaline packed, fight-or-flight reaction. This reaction was very useful when we had to figure out what to do with a saber-toothed tiger – do we get our club and spear and fight it, or do we run and hide? At a sign of threat we produce lots of adrenalin, the blood goes to our extremities to help us run and fight and we react swiftly and instinctively to surrounding events.

This is fine if the house is on fire or we are in a war. But it is useless in normal everyday life where the threats are of a vastly different nature. If you go into a difficult committee meeting with your muscles tensed and your face red and with your teeth bared, you will not negotiate anything worthwhile.

When we go into the fight-or-flight reaction the blood goes away from the brain to the extremities and our thinking becomes unclear and we can make poor choices. There was a case of a man who killed his daughter when he thought a burglar was in the house and shot without thinking. Anger, rage and defensiveness cause dumb decisions and inflict much of our social harm.

The Christian alternative to the fight-or-flight reaction is personal mastery through nonresistance.

Mastery is the ability to use professional skill and wisdom to solve problems in creative and non-reactive ways. It involves taking the focus off the problem and onto the solution and then achieving that solution.

Say two people get a flat tire we will call one Problem-Focused Pete and the other Solution- Focused Sam:

Problem-Focused Pete – sees the problem, says “why did the nail get in my tire, what was the nail doing in the road, I am going to sue whoever left that nail here, now I am going to be late, I am calling my lawyer, soon Problem-focused Pete is yelling at the top of his lungs and abusing the car and the tire and the road and the nail manufacturer and is photographing the tire and the nail and videoing everything for the court case and is still there six hours later collecting evidence and complaining loudly.

Solution-Focused Sam: Gets out the jack and the spanners and the spare tire and uses his mechanical skill to change the tire in under a minute and is back on the road in no time. He goes home and watches Problem-Focused Pete being arrested on TV for abusive behavior.

Jesus wants us to be like Solution-Focused Sam. He wants us to be calm, to be wise, to be professional and to be constructive solvers of life’s problems.

 

Hmmmm....sounds a lot like what Eckhart has to say about resistance etc. although as I glanced through this e-book (which was about 300 pages long) I saw things I disagree with (some strongly.) I also saw some very good, practical suggestions for living out the Sermon On The Mount in real time...real life...and not just as an ideology we aspire to but never really expect to achieve (in this life anyway.)  Some pie in the sky ideal that our flesh/carnal mind/egoic self looks at and says simply...no way, jose.  Check out the book.  It's free and contains some no nonsense suggestions that make more sense than those contained in many books I have actually paid for.