I ran into this intriguing quotation on a friend's blog. What do you think?
The New Testament proclaims an unlikely Savior. The work of Jesus in his incarnation, life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension makes no worldly sense at all. The portrait the Gospels paint is that of a lifeguard who leaps into the surf, swims to the drowning girl, and then, instead of doing a cross-chest carry, drowns with her, revives three days later, and walks off the beach with assurances that everything including the apparently still-dead girl, is hunky-dory.
(Originally from a book by Robert Farrar Copan.)
3 comments:
I could not agree less with this quote. I would say He's the lifeguard who exchanges His life for hers, comes back to life three days later (HUGE distinction between coming back to life and revives; obvs. that you friend has no medical training) and then spends the rest of your life in all ways connected with the girl who He saved.
Not to be all tough love or anything. :)
Well if we're going to stick to biblical language and metaphysical fact, it'd be even more accurate to say that Jesus is the lifeguard, the girl actually did drown- she's dead, way dead- but by Jesus going into the surf and digging her out of the sand and doing some radical things, Jesus dies in an exchange that brings her back to life.
Metaphors are nice, but any metaphor that denies that a) we're dead in sin and b) that Jesus' death was a substitution for our final death is ultimately a miss of the biblical mark.
Okay, Dave - thanks for engaging! Let's consider the existential experience for a moment. On a day to day basis, life can often feel very much the same as it did before Christ - our suffering has not changed; we may not feel very "saved." Our salvation is, in a very real sense, delayed. We are apparently still dead in a lot of ways. Sure, from the standpoint of atonement for sins, Jesus' death makes a lot of sense. But in our day-to-day lives, it can be highly puzzling.
Thanks for your way of recasting the scenario; I like it. As you say, all metaphors fall short, depending on which direction you push them. This quotation happened to tweak me, both positively and negatively, and I wanted to hear others' reactions.
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