"What Jesus Meant," Garry Wills -- Bookclub meets here

Off-topic
1

Typically, if you join the bookclub, it’s expected that you read the book. I know that’s asking a LOT, but we have to ask that of people who wish to join.

So please join us IF YOU READ THE BOOK.

And before debating, please begin by telling us your experience of the book: positive or negative? uplifting or downed? enriched? informed? did you like it? did it make you angry?

I’ll open by saying I really liked this book. It’s short, pretty easy to read, and makes points clearly. And it’s about a truly interesting and courageous character, who I’m also fond of. I don’t want to hog the club, so lets see who else read the book, and what they have to say.

Here’s a review of the book (I edited out 95%) that was in the NYTimes:

The Radical

Review by JON MEACHAM
Published: March 12, 2006

In his fascinating new book, “What Jesus Meant,” Garry Wills says:

“To read the Gospels in the spirit with which they were written, it is
not enough to ask what Jesus did or said,” Wills writes. “We must ask
what Jesus meant by his strange words and deeds.”

Wills says. “The only Jesus we have is the Jesus of faith. If you
reject the faith, there is no reason to trust anything the Gospels say.”
At the same time, if you accept the faith, there is no reason to trust
everything the Gospels say, either.

Jesus, Wills thinks, “intended to reveal the Father to us, and to show
that he is the only-begotten Son of that Father. What he signified is
always more challenging than we expect, more outrageous, more
egregious.” [They say the same thing about BTM :wink: ]

Wills convincingly shows that Jesus was a radical whose essential
message to love one another totally and unconditionally is fundamentally
at odds with the impulses of those living in a fallen world. Jesus left
sundry examples of how one should live not for power but for the poor,
not for fame but for forgiveness.

Jesus’ earliest followers believed in their Lord’s physical
resurrection. If the tomb had not been empty, the authorities could have
shut down the early Christians rather easily by dragging out Jesus’
bones; they had, after all, gone to all the trouble to execute him, and
the only plausible explanation for the disciples’ transformation from
scattered and scared to fierce preachers and martyrs is that they came
to believe Jesus had in fact risen from the dead and began, at last, to
understand what he had been saying to them all along. So what is the ultimate meaning of Jesus? The question will be with us
always, even to the end of the age. But we do know this: One cannot read
his story without seeing that there is no life without love.

2

I read the book. I enjoyed it and learned a few things about the times which I didn’t know. (Of course, I knew very little about the times to begin with.)

What I came away with is that Jesus was even more radical than I had previously thought. And that most Christians according to the author are no more Christian than am I.

But what I came most away with is that, if this author is to be believed, Jesus was essentially a failed Buddha. Jesus’ message, according to how I understand this book, translates pretty much to what the Buddha taught. But Jesus made the critical error of couching his message in the supernatural, the Father. I’m sure that there was no way around it given the times. But it was ultimately the fatal blow that undid his teaching. Christianity became a hierarchy not a way of life.

3

Having never read the book, I want to reply to this comment anyway…as I said in another thread, Jesus never wrote down anything he wrote, and nothing was written about him until after his death (same is true for the Buddha actually but that’s not the point). So a lot of people argue whether or not he actually said that he was a physical, Earthly incarnation of some divine being. And in some types of Buddhism, the Truth, Ultimate Reality, or Dharma is comparable to a sort of God. Not a supreme being, and not a Creator or a Father, but a sort of life force that is bigger than us all, you know? And I think that some rather liberal Christians would say the same thing about their God. So maybe Jesus talked about God, as a sort of metaphor for Life or something. Well he did say that God is Love, didn’t he? I think I’m rambling about nothing now, anyhoo, my point is that Buddha simply means ‘awakened one’ and Jesus seems to fall under that category in a lot of ways.
Also, I think I’m gonna read this book sometime.

4

(I havn’t read the book either)

We will never know on earth exactly what Jesus or God means, but I think he was the creator of us and everything else…not just a higher life force. I believe this simply because it says so in the bible.

My $.02

5

That’s not the book they are discussing here.

6

Sorry, I didn’t read it, not really. I glanced at it for about 15 minutes at a Barnes & Noble store. Mostly I skimmed through the afterword, which seemed to say that his main points are that Jesus is love and the Gospel is not a message to be applied in politics today. I agree with those assertions, so I figured I’d spend my time unicycling instead of reading Mr. Wills’ book. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Dangit, I read the wrong book: “What Apollonius Meant.”

8

Some of your best friends may have faith in the “supernatural.”

Could you have counted Jesus among your friends?

Did you have any thoughts about how at least half of his miracle stories take shots at the “purity codes” of the time?

9

Not may, do.

Yes.

No, none in particular.

10

Happy to hear that.

Surprised you have so little to say.

BTM

11

Yup.

12

Nice try Billy.