Jesus Seminar Quotes

Patanjali, Buddha, Moses and Jesus did not go to workshops or seminars or even churches. They went directly to nature: sat under a Bodhi tree or on top of a mountain or in a cave. … It is time to return to the source of this inspiration – the earth itself.

On a blustery October night in a church outside Minneapolis, several hundred believers had gathered for a three-day seminar. I began with a one-hour presentation on the gospel of grace and the reality of Salvation. Using Scripture, story, symbolism, and personal experience, I focused on the total sufficiency of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ on Calvary. The service ended with a song and a prayer. Leaving the church by a side door, the pastor turned to his associate and fumed, 'Humph, that airhead didn't say one thing about what we have to do to earn our salvation!' Something is radically wrong.

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be.

There are things you cannot know without suffering. God has special tutorials in tribulation for his shepherds. Do not begrudge the seminars of suffering. His aim is to make you, like Jesus, a sympathetic shepherd. It’s scary. Paul prayed that he would share Christ’s sufferings and become like him in his death (Phil. 3:10). God answered him. He was forsaken at his last trial (2 Tim. 4:16), and the Romans took him out. We are not playing games.

When Jesus said eternal life is knowing God—including God the Son, Jesus Christ—He did not mean that eternal life is knowing about God. He was not referring to someone who has read many books and attended numerous seminars about God. He was talking about a firsthand, experiential knowledge. We come to truly know God as we experience Him in and around our lives. Many people have grown up attending church and hearing about God all their lives, but they do not have a personal, dynamic, growing relationship with God. They never hear His voice. They have no idea what God's will is. They do not encounter His love firsthand. They have no sense of divine purpose for their lives. They may know a lot about God, but they don't really know Him.

The first time I read Isaac Babel was in a college creative writing class. The instructor was a sympathetic Jewish novelist with a Jesus-like beard, an affinity for Russian literature, and a melancholy sense of humor, such that one afternoon he even “realized” the truth of human mortality, right there in the classroom. He pointed at each of us around the seminar table: “You’re going to die. And you’re going to die. And you’re going to die.” I still remember the expression on the face of one of my classmates, a genial scion of the Kennedy family who always wrote the same story, about a busy corporate lawyer who neglected his wife. The expression was confused.

When people in churches today discuss Paul and his letters, they often think only of the man of ideas who dealt with lofty and difficult concepts, implying a world of libraries, seminar rooms, or at least the minister’s study for quiet sermon preparation. We easily forget that the author of these letters spent most of his waking hours with his sleeves rolled up, doing hard physical work in a hot climate, and that perhaps two-thirds of the conversations he had with people about Jesus and the gospel were conducted not in a place of worship or study, not even in a private home, but in a small, cramped workshop. Saul had his feet on the ground, and his hands were hardened with labor. But his head still buzzed with scripture and the news about Jesus.

So the fact that Nietzsche feels that Christ died too early is a general idea only; we really have the need to ask the question: "What would Jesus have taught if he had been a married man, with eight children for instance? How would he have dealt with certain situations in life which only occur when you are in life, when you share it?" Of course he was in his own life but it was a very partial one - he was not really in life as we know it. He would perhaps be a good teacher inasmuch as one is meant to live his particular life, the life of a philosophical tramp who really has the idealistic purpose of teaching a new saving truth, who recognizes no other responsibility. You see, he had no profession and no human connections which were valid to him. He separated himself from his family, was the lord of his disciples, who had to follow him while he had to follow no one, being under no obligations. This is an exceedingly simple situation, tragically simple, which is so rare that one cannot assume that the teaching coming from such a life can be possible or applicable to an entirely different type of life. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 779-780)

One could say that he (Jesus Christ) himself was the ripe fruit of antiquity; he gathered up in himself the essence of the wisdom of the Near East, contained the juice of Egypt and of Greece, and came together with the mob. And that caused a great whirlwind which moved masses and formed them, which brought about that form which we call Christianity. Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 1032)

Since I was about ten years younger than this crew of alcoholics, I just listened and filled their cups with cheap wine. After they’d had enough, I’d tell them of my escapades in Riverbank and in Panama where I’d worked with the Southern Baptist Convention and Jesus Christ to save the black souls of niggers, spics and Indians. I used to keep my eye on Harris when I told my stories. He had this nasty habit of pulling out a little notebook in the middle of a conversation and jotting down, as he said, “story ideas.” Later on, after I’d transferred to S.F. State and taken his writing course, he asked me if I wanted to read his first draft of Wake Up, Stupid! I kept it for a week and returned it to him at the next short story seminar. I only read the first paragraph. After that, I was no longer afraid of the intellectuals. I knew I could tell a better story.

I remember meeting a man who gave sex seminars to students at various college campuses. To get people to come he passed out flyers that were entitled “How to Have the Best Sex on Earth.” Of course, his lecture attracted a huge turnout. He spoke about sex between two virgins on their wedding night being disease-free, guilt-free, comparison-free, and shame-free, as well as being pleasing to God. It is the best sex you can have on earth. He explained that many people fall short and that is why Jesus died on a cross. In Christ anyone can start over. As 1 Corinthians 6:9--11 says: “The sexually immoral…will [not] inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed…sanctified…[and] justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” The forgiveness found in Christ doesn’t take away from the fact that God’s way is always the best way for a marriage and our world. Hebrews 13:4 says: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure.” That is exactly what Missy and I did.

I had grown weary of so many rules. That's the thing about every discipline. There's often a format, a belief that if you don't follow the structure to the tiniest detail, you won't get the maximum value: mantras are private. Om is the most perfect sound in the universe. Never lay a sacred text to chant on the floor. If you are in a seminar, always wear a name tag. Put your name in the upper right hand corner of every essay. Just breathe. No, scream. No, cry or hit something. But don't lose yourself. Never do yoga on the full moon. Walk clockwise around a temple. Don't eat protein and starch in the same meal. Always begin the day with fruit. Don't eat any fruit. Never utter the word of G_d. There is no God. There are multiple gods. To be a good acupuncturist, "check your stuff" at the door. Bring all of you. Never do work on the Sabbath. Don't cary anything in your pockets. Consciousness is constant work. Accept Jesus. Read the Bible. There is no suffering. Acknowledge suffering as a noble truth. Tread lightly on the Earth. Leave no trace. Make your mark. Get noticed. Travel silently through life. Attend to the needs of others. Follow your bliss. Suppress. Express. Withhold. Let go. Let it in. Get off the grid. Join the marketplace. Go toward the light. Hadn't I heard enough?

You see, the word passio means suffering, and the German word Leidenschaft has been explained by a poet in a very nice way: Leidenschaft ist das was Leid schafft, passion is that which creates suffering. Leidenschaft is really sufferingness. That is the Buddhistic explanation too: the desirousness, the concupiscentia, of man, creates the great suffering of the world. This passio, then, is the flame which turns man into ashes if he exposes himself to it. But Nietzsche did not. He avoided it, and I cannot blame him, for if anybody can avoid the fire he is very wise to do so. Now, there is another saying of Jesus, similar to those found at Oxyrhynchus, which is not in the Canon. It runs: Whoever is close to me is close to the fire.[3] That means that whoever is close to Christ, is close to Christ's passio, and is apt to have Christ's own psychology and the same fate. He was the one who took up his passio. He submitted to it and suffered correspondingly, and whoever is close to him will do the same. This is exceedingly intelligent and exceedingly true, and would therefore have been abolished if the father of the church who quoted it had not been too stupid to understand it. [3] "Jesus says: "He who is near me is near the fire, and he who is far from me is far from the Kingdom." See Apocrypha, for Origen on Jeremiah, p. 35· Jung, C. G.. Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged (Jung Seminars) (p. 340). Princeton University Press.

It is the purpose of both God and the devil to provide you with the answers to these key questions.  If Satan is able to establish his images of identity and destiny in your life, he then has set up a system of governing your life that more or less runs itself and requires very little maintenance or service on his part. It is an effective scheme of destruction in your life. I believe that it has always been God’s intention to impart, especially at specific junctures in life, His message of identity and destiny.  He has appointed special agents on this earth to ensure that His message of identity and destiny is revealed.  These agents are called PARENTS.  Their primary job is to make sure that children receive God’s message of identity and destiny throughout their growing-up years. Satan’s purpose is to access these very agents of God, the parents, and to impart his message of identity and destiny.  Many times parents are unwittingly used to impart the devil’s message rather than God’s. SATAN’S MESSAGE VS. GOD’S MESSAGE What type of message does the devil want to reveal regarding identity and destiny?  His message is something along these lines.  IDENTITY: “You are worthless.  You aren’t even supposed to be here.  You are a mistake.  Something is drastically wrong with you.  You are a ‘nobody.’” DESTINY: “You have no purpose.  You are a total failure.  You’ll never be a success.  You are inadequate.  You are not equipped to accomplish the job.  Nothing ever works out for you, etc..” I once heard a woman say, “It’s as if someone dropped me off on the planet forty some years ago, and I’ve been trying to make my way the best I could ever since.  But deep inside, I don’t feel as though I belong here, and I’ve been waiting for that someone to come back and pick me up.”  God never intended for anyone to feel that he doesn’t belong.  That is Satan’s message. God's message of identity and destiny is something like this:  IDENTITY:  “To Me you are very valuable and are worth the life of Jesus Christ.  You are a `somebody.’  You do belong here.  Before the foundation of the earth, I planned for you.  You were no mistake.” DESTINY:  “You are destined to a great purpose on this earth.  I placed you here for a purpose.  You are a success as a person and are completely adequate and suited to carry out My purpose.  Set your vision high, and allow Me to complete great accomplishments in your life.” JOE’S STORY Joe was a well dressed, successful business man in his late thirties when I first met him.  He had come to a weekend “FROM CURSE TO BLESSING” seminar.  As we moved into the small-group ministry time, Joe began to share, somewhat sheepishly, about the tremendous problem that anger had caused him in his life.  “Anger causes me to embarrass myself, and

[A]lmost every book or seminar I have ever encountered on the topic of apologetics... seem[s] to assume that a good argument and a humble demeanor are all that one needs in order to be an effective apologist. Where and how we engage people—the community setting, the geographical location, the music, whether there is food on the table— rarely gets much attention. This needs to change… We must not reduce our interactions with people, even very smart ones, purely to a series of arguments about the basics of Christianity. We will also need to discover ways in which we… can enable Jesus’ reality to take firm shape before others’ eyes.

Wright correctly diagnoses the failure of the New Quest (and its current heirs, such as the Jesus Seminar, Crossan and Burton L. Mack)" to fit Jesus' overall life and ministry into sufficiently historical contexts and the broader theological narratives of his day. Wright helpfully observes that the uniquely North American work of the Jesus Seminar members is so idiosyncratic that it is often not even taken seriously in other parts of the world (JVG 35 n. 23).

It has been the universal practice to denounce such challenges to the core doctrines of particular faiths as blasphemous. Yet it would be far from irrational in today’s better-informed world to reverse the practice, and charge with blasphemy any religious or political leader who claims to speak with or on behalf of God. The idea is to place the personal dignity of the believer above the dignity of the belief that demands his unquestioning obedience. It might eventually be possible to hold seminars on the historical Jesus in evangelical churches, and even to publish images of Muhammad without risking death.

Most of Morgan’s “homework assignments” for readers and seminar attendees involved sex. A wife was to love her husband “unconditionally,” and that meant making herself sexually available to him. The Bible, after all, said not to “cheat each other of normal sexual intercourse,” and to “let her breasts satisfy thee at all times.” God understood women, and “He knew they would probably use the prized possession of sex to manipulate men.” That’s why he warned against rationing it out.

Pentecost, as is far too seldom noted by commentators, reverses Babel, and on that great birth day of the church the good news of Jesus is told truly and accurately in the variety of languages present in Jerusalem on that feast day. “After Pentecost” thus evokes the point that the real possibility of miscommunication does not have the final word; language is a good gift from God and when used properly is a wonderful vehicle for telling the truth about God and the world.

I had ignored the “emotional component” in my seeking of God for seventeen years. The spiritual-discipleship approaches of the churches and ministries that had shaped me did not have the language, theology, or training to help me in this area. It didn’t matter how many books I read or seminars I attended in the other areas—physical, social, intellectual, spiritual. It didn’t matter how many years passed, whether seventeen or another thirty. I would remain an emotional infant until this was exposed and transformed through Jesus Christ.

And for an argument that blends science denial and Biblical superstition in a delightful shithead sundae, there’s Erick Erickson’s, “The difference between people who believe in the second coming of Jesus and those who believe in global warming is that Jesus will return.” One could teach a graduate seminar on all the boneheaded assumptions festering in that one statement. But,

Equally, it does not mean that Christian beliefs cause more distortion than other ideological beliefs. This emerged with particular clarity in engaging with the opinion that Jesus did not exist. This view is demonstrably false. It is fuelled by a regrettable form of atheist prejudice, which holds all the main primary sources, and Christian people, in contempt. This is not merely worse than the American Jesus Seminar, it is no better than Christian fundamentalism. It simply has different prejudices.

One of the common expectations about hearing from God is that we will be able to get direct guidance for decisions we need to make. I may want to know which car to buy so I do not get a lemon, or which job to take, or whom to marry. We often think of God's will as a particular set of right and wrong choices we can make, in which case we would want to get a clear direction from Him as to what to do. Any time there is a seminar on how to know the will of God for your life, the place is usually packed out. While seeking guidance from God is important, this particular emphasis and approach to finding God's will is somewhat misguided.[27] First, God's will involves much more than choosing “A” or “B.” Thinking about God's will only in this way can severely limit the quality of our connection with Him. Second, people sometimes seek these kinds of answers as a way of avoiding the work of deciding or taking responsibility for making decisions. Third, getting the right answer without going through the process of getting there can sidestep the learning that may be available in that choice. As noted above, Jesus often preferred teaching over giving short answers to questions, choosing to help people see a given situation through the eyes of heaven rather than telling them what to do. Asking God what we need to see in order to make better choices is something that we can have confidence He will help us with. Generally speaking, our perspective on life needs to come from God, but it is up to us to intentionally choose what is good based on what He shows us. And yes, sometimes God does have something specific in mind that He wants us to know. If that is the case, we can be fairly certain He will not play a guessing game with us, leaving vague clues around for us to pick up on. Whenever we ask for direction and find that clarity is not on the horizon, we might want to consider asking God what else He wants us to know about the issue and seek to become learners in the process. Of course, you will not receive anything that runs contrary to Scripture.

Such opposition proved inconvenient when it came to the Reagan administration’s attempt to secure congressional support to intervene on the Contras’ behalf. When Congress refused to comply, instead prohibiting the use of any funds “for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua,” Reagan turned to his evangelical allies for help in winning over the public. Inviting religious groups to special White House foreign policy seminars, administration officials peddled stories of the horrors perpetrated by Marxist guerrillas, framing the conflict as one between revolutionaries and Christians and urging religious organizations to assist them through lobbying and letter writing.

If you asked most Christians today what it would take for them to know Jesus better, the answers most likely would range from Bible study, time alone with God, prayer, a good church, good fellowship, seminars, or Christian magazines. Most of these have varying validity, but in Paul’s estimation, they lacked a key component. In Philippians 3:10 Paul wrote that I may “know Him.” He used the Greek word that generally means, “to know by experience,” rather than “to know intellectually.” Herein is a foundational difference between Paul and many others. Some limit their knowledge of Jesus only to information. Scribble it in a notebook, take good notes, treat the Bible as an academic textbook—walk away and leave it when you want. For Paul, the Person of Jesus stayed in the forefront. He never denied the need for deep study—he enjoyed it—but he never divorced doctrine from the Author. Living words from the living God nourished Paul throughout his Christian walk.

Jesus Seminar, new studies in the past few decades have explored beyond the letter of the Gospel accounts to create not only a more human portrait of him, but also deeper insight into his impact. These scholars delved beyond theology into history, political science, comparative religion, and psychology, highlighting the radical political relevance of Jesus’ message. By looking at him in the full context of