Four Gospels

The Four Gospels

Rev. Ken Ayotte

I found "The Four Gospels" to be both educational and fascinating. The story of Jesus, the man, has always been one of profoundness, but I think that the stories or parables that Jesus told are of much more value.

This is not to say that Jesus himself was and is not an important figure. He has been one of, if not the, most important influences that ever existed. However, it is my belief that Jesus was not nearly as important as His messages. He spoke, through parables, of many truths, which have existed throughout history.

Some of these are obvious and some a bit more vague. The more obvious ones are the ones which we live by every day. They would include most of the Ten Commandments (yes, of course Jesus taught these) as well as most values cherished by the western world. His messages are those of tolerance, and love and understanding each other and why we think and believe the way we do.

The Book of John, although my least favorite of the Gospels, certainly demands a certain amount of attention. I think that maybe this book became popular because it is so controversial. It is quite dramatic and even contradictory at times. What I really do not like about it though is the fact that most "Christians" tend to consider this the book to pay attention to and design their entire lives after.

Of course it would be much easier to do it with this book than with the others because of its simplistic messages. I find this both ironic and disturbing.

Ironic because it was not only written long after Jesus had supposedly died, but also because it was obviously not written by a single person.

Disturbing because of its interpretation that the Jews were responsible for Jesus' death. I cannot believe that a book that is supposed to teach about the life, the messages, and the death of a man such as Jesus would teach such vile hatred and bigotry. Jesus was a Jew and taught mainly Jews. His teachings never included such messages as hate.

Also, it was God's will that Jesus be put to death, not the will of the entire Jewish population of 2000 years ago. Knowing this, should the people who hate the Jews for supposedly doing this also hate God? I doubt if they would wish to, but that is, in essence, exactly what they are doing. Jesus' entire life and death was supposed to be preordained by God. Not by man--Jewish or otherwise.

If the Jews are to be condemned for the death of Jesus, then they must also be given credit for all that happened prior to His death. This would be wrong also. The whole basis of Christianity is that Jesus rose from the dead to save all of mankind. Well, if he was never put to death, and died a natural death at a ripe old age, would His existence have had the same impact? I doubt it.

We should be thanking all of those who were part of the journey of Jesus, not condemning a single person, let alone an entire race or races. Otherwise, the entire journey was wasted. Jesus taught that we need to learn to love each other, not hate each other. The easy road is seldom the best road to take and yet we tend to always take the easy road. What have we learned? We cannot even agree within our own families, our own communities, let alone agree in the global community. That would be too hard a road to take for most of us, especially and obviously much too hard for our world leaders.

The Book of John. It is as though several very young scholars got together and attempted to rewrite the sacred words so that they would appeal to their peers. Put into a language and context of their time, it probably worked. Jesus would never want us to hate.

Reverend Kenneth Ayotte

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