Jesus knew his listeners were...
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Jesus knew his listeners were disturbed about his identity. Everywhere people were discussing him. His comments about his personhood were disturbing. Could it be? Was this the Son of God, the God of heaven and earth? G. K. Chesterton wonders about the impact of this claim on those who first heard it:
"What should we feel at the first whisper of a certain suggestion about a certain man? Certainly it is not for us to blame anybody who should find that first wild whisper merely impious and insane. On the contrary, stumbling on that rock of scandal is the first step ... Stark staring incredulity is a far more loyal tribute to that truth ... It were better to rend our robes with a great cry of blasphemy, like Caiphas in the judgment, or to lay hold of the man as a maniac possessed of devils like the kinsmen and the crowd, rather than to stand stupidly debating fine shades of pantheism in the presence of so catastrophic a claim. There is more of the wisdom that is one with surprise in any simple person, full of the sensitiveness of simplicity, who should expect the grass to wither and the birds to drop dead out of the air, when a strolling carpenter's apprentice said calmly and almost carelessly, like one looking over his shoulder: 'Before Abraham was, I am.' "
(From G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., 1925. 4th Edition, January, 1960, p. 197.)
-- Hedahl
"What should we feel at the first whisper of a certain suggestion about a certain man? Certainly it is not for us to blame anybody who should find that first wild whisper merely impious and insane. On the contrary, stumbling on that rock of scandal is the first step ... Stark staring incredulity is a far more loyal tribute to that truth ... It were better to rend our robes with a great cry of blasphemy, like Caiphas in the judgment, or to lay hold of the man as a maniac possessed of devils like the kinsmen and the crowd, rather than to stand stupidly debating fine shades of pantheism in the presence of so catastrophic a claim. There is more of the wisdom that is one with surprise in any simple person, full of the sensitiveness of simplicity, who should expect the grass to wither and the birds to drop dead out of the air, when a strolling carpenter's apprentice said calmly and almost carelessly, like one looking over his shoulder: 'Before Abraham was, I am.' "
(From G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., 1925. 4th Edition, January, 1960, p. 197.)
-- Hedahl
