Question 3: To which social strata would Jesus Blog or Twitter?

As well as the diversity of ethnicity, take into account the social structure of Jesus' audience.
They weren't stiff weirdos in robes with odd looks on their faces as depicted in Flannelgraph or Felt board illustrations from Sunday School. (If they came from the corner of the teacher's shoe box where their head had been folded in half they looked particularly weird.)

There were Roman soldiers and officers, Roman knights, Herod's soldiers and officers, taxmen, fishermen, labourers, farmers, tradies of all kinds – blacksmiths, wheelwrights, cartwrights, boat builders, sail makers, tent makers, carpenters, stone masons, shopkeepers, merchants, retired, housekeepers, slaves, tutors, kids, slave traders, wealthy landlords, temple officials, religious nuts, religious leaders, scribes and calligraphers, scholars, boof heads and rabble rousers – not to mention sick, deformed, tormented and lame people by the dozens.

And isn't that the population of the internet?

So what were they thinking and what would he say to them?

If Jesus blogged or twittered who would be his readers or followers?

Galilee in Palestine in 30 AD was like the main drag at the Sydney Royal Easter Show or The Strand in London. There was every kind of ethnic group you could find.

There were native born Jews, foreign Jews coming for a visit or to trade, traders from all corners of the known world – importers and exporters – from Egypt, Rome, Turkey, Crete, Malta, Italy, Persia, Ethiopia, Spain, Babylonia, Syria, Assyria. There were Roman soldiers and officers, Roman citizens, slaves, the poor, the sick, wealthy women, rich landlords, Herod's soldiers and courtiers, political insurgents, rebels, loyalists.



Does that remind you of any collective audience today?

It's a lot like the internet community, isn't it? He'd have impacting things to say to the Internet community today too.

What message would be in Jesus' blog?

What would Jesus Blog look like?
Who would be his friends on Facebook?
How would his Twitters read?
What would he be promoting on his website?
No-one knows of course, but he did leave clues as to what he might have e-communicated about.

He told his followers to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. So what was the Gospel?
If you follow the six or seven sermons that (St.) Luke recorded in the Book of Acts you'll see the followers followed a distinct pattern. It went more or less like this:

1. This is God's world
2. People have mucked it up
3. God has proved it is his world by raising the man Jesus from the dead.
4. The offer is that if you believe this and line your life up with what he stands for, God will regard you as always having been on his side and mucked up nothing at all.
5. If you don't believe it and keep on going your own way regardless, it's a no brainer – it's God's world, so who do you think will have the last word?

Question 1 of Many: What would Jesus Blog and Twitter About? – WWJBTA

Question 1 of Many: What would Jesus Blog and Twitter About? – WWJBTA
Would he do either?
Don’t know. I’m as good or bad a guess as anyone wearing a WWJD wrist band. 
However he did leave clues which you might follow and take up where he left off.
So here's a starter.
1. He’d recognise that the Internet and the Blogosphere are his scene.
He said on his departure from Palestine, “All authority is given to me on heaven and on earth” and so it is reasonable to assert that he would include authority over the Internet and the Blogosphere in his purview as well. That means the Internet is not Steve Jobs' or Bill Gates' or even Tim Berners-Lee's or Leonard Kleinroc's.  He‘d no more shy away from it because it is full of porn or time-wasting or perverts than he shied away from the entire earth which in his time – if not ours – was full of the same.
Message: You should be in here stirring up a little controversial goodness just as he would.
To infinity and beyond, then!

The Spreading Flame

I've been gleaning my library and came across the 1958 FF Bruce classic, "The Spreading Flame" - about the first 600 years of the Christian era. I had another read.

It's been interesting to see how the longer the Christian era has gone on, the more complicated people have made it.

Lots of people hold to the belief that today's church needs to get back to the ways of the "early church".

I agree that it wouldn't be too bad a thing - except for the toilets, no running water, no under-arm deodorant, baggy undies and nothing to eat but felafels, figs and goat curd - not to mention the odd Roman Emperor serving you up to his lions or setting you on fire.

At best it's a romantic notion in many ways.

But it sure was less complex.

On the first day, people had to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead, repent from their sins and be baptised. Full stop.

By 49 AD they had to do all of that and not eat meat sacrificed to idols. not eat meat which wasn't drained of blood, stay away from sexual immorality and remember to give money to the poorer churches.

This was all still pretty simple.

Then as more naughty people began to fiddle around with what should be believed and practised and more "intellectuals" came out with their paint cans full of the inevitable shades of grey, we've ended up with catechisms, creeds, authorised translations, canons, penances, eschatologies, pneumatologies, sainthoods, various abodes of the dead, laws and decrees - even inquisitions, trials by fire and water and the odd beheading here and there. Remember when women had to wear hats to church and Catholics and Protestants had to walk on opposite sides of the street on the way to church? Now you don't even have to believe in God. You just refer everything to "Universe" - whatever you conceive that to be - and all will be peachy.

Nuts isn't it?

So what's a person to do? I guess we ought to get it back to simple things such as existed in the first 20 years (except for the sanitary conditions and the appalling lack of Christmas Turkey!). Yet as FF Bruce keeps observing, "Human nature being as it is..." it's not likely to last.

Not wanting to complicate a simple matter, I feel like recommending a few things:

> Jesus' teaching summed up in a line: Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind soul and strength and love your neighbour as yourself.

> Paul's teaching summed up in one line: ...but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to that which is ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14).

> My teaching summed up in one line: Both of the above and "When all else fails, character works!"

To infinity and beyond, then. Live long and prosper.

Cheers

Colin Pearce

Speaker, Author, Coach

A Prayer about Clocks

Lord God, today I read an article about Ian Westworth, the ingenious and faithful man who tends the Great Westminster Clock in London and its famous bell, Big Ben.

I thought, 'How clever! All those levers and knobs and belts and cogs and pulleys and how marvellous it is that he can tell that the clock is running half a second slow and by placing a farthing or a penny on the top of the pendulum can alter the time on the clock that keeps all of London on its toes.'

He also tends some 500 other clocks in Westminster and its Houses of Parliament and ensures they all run to time precisely. Yet he himself doesn't own a clock. 'I've been looking for the right one for thirty years', he says.

And then of course I thought of You, Lord God, the Master Time Keeper.

You are the one who thought of time itself. Standing outside it in eternity where there is neither beginning nor end, day nor night, travel nor pace, you created a thing separate from - yet mystically intertwined with eternity, and that thing is entirely made up of beginnings and ends, travel, pace, birth and death.

And I thought, 'So what a clumsy thing is a clock? How clever is a clock maker, really?'

I am stunned as I think about it. If I think any more I might slip into spontaneous combustion.

I also marvel at the mind of someone who can think of futuristic plots for movies and books where time is bent and altering events of the past can affect events of the present and future. What imagination!

Yet that is nothing in comparison to You, Lord God who because you created time can glance up and down the lines of it and see it all from outside as a visitor to a train museum observes a model railway through a window. Of course you can see what we call the future and of course you are right when you say we can trust you because you can see everything ahead. To you it's only a bit of the track and you can see how it fits the complete model. Of course you can forgive the past. To you it is part of the hidden building materials that are the model's structure, bits of rubbish and scrap that nevertheless hold the model in place.

And yet you are here right inside time too.

You yourself cracked a hole in the window between time and eternity in a place called Bethlehem and crept in, inconspicuous to all but a handful of shepherds, a young girl and a carpenter. For thirty something winters, springs, summers and autumns you left your signature everywhere you went in time and space, pointing to when there would be neither season, time nor space and where we could ourselves enjoy and at last comprehend that mysterious thing called eternity - where no clock ever ticks nor bell chimes.

All is required of us is the child-like trust of a believer.

To say I am amazed at you sounds so silly, but I am.

Colin Pearce