Investigating the Bible: Assumptions and facts

By David Carlson Pastor

In the Reader’s Digest, Don Jentleson explained that he gave his 16-year-old son a prepaid cellphone and asked him to use it if he was ever out beyond his curfew. One Saturday evening, Jentleson dozed off in front of the TV and awoke beyond his son’s curfew time, with no sign of him and no call. He was irate. He called his son’s number and demanded, “Where are you and why didn’t you call?” The sleepy voice of his son replied, “Dad, I’m upstairs in bed. I’ve been home for an hour.” Contemporaries of Jesus made assumptions about him which were far from the truth.

One man assumed Jesus’ teaching was literal. “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’” (John 3:1-5, English Standard Version used throughout).

Later, the Pharisees sent their soldiers to arrest Jesus. The men found him, but they came back empty-handed. “… ‘Why did you not bring him?’ The officers answered, ‘No one ever spoke like this man!’” (John 7:45-46). Nicodemus then had the courage to support Jesus in daylight and in public. He said to his fellow religious leaders, “… ‘Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?’ They replied, ‘Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.’” (John 7:51-52).

If the Pharisees had investigated, they would have discovered Jesus’ birthplace was in Bethlehem of Judea, far south of Galilee. Bethlehem was the town where Old Testament prophets predicted the messiah would be born. The Pharisees considered only his current home of Galilee and accepted that information as fact. The late journalist Charles Osgood in his book, “The Osgood Files,” offered a reason why we trust some news reports and doubt others: “Sometimes people complain that they may be getting facts, but not the ‘true’ facts. A ‘true fact’ is one which supports your own point of view, whatever that point of view happens to be.”

After Jesus was crucified, Nicodemus, “…came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.” (John 19:39-40). Myrrh was a costly import in Judea. Some commentaries estimate the value of the burial spices for Jesus to be as high as $150,000 in today’s currency! The expensive gift indicates that Nicodemus had believed. The sacrifice and death of Jesus convinced him.

Both death and beauty confront our values. When Steve Jobs learned he had cancer, he wrote: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.” Also near this time, Jobs listened to a private concert from famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Walter Isaacson wrote that after Ma played Bach, “Jobs teared up and told him, ‘You playing is the best argument I’ve ever heard for the existence of God, because I don’t really believe a human alone can do this.’”

David Carlson Pastor (yes, that is his last name, not his profession) is a Polk County resident and graduate of Bethel Theological Seminary in Minnesota (M.Div., M.Th.).