JUST A STORY

Guest Post by Belteshazzar

Suggest reading during a quiet moment, alone, with no distractions present.

Maybe read it before dozing off for the evening. Sleep on it.

Inspiration hit me on this one, in a special moment of clarity, so I write of the experience, trying to capture and record a few of the thoughts. Meanders a bit, but will try to tie it all together in the end.

What this story is not, is any type of admonishment to adopt my way of thinking.

Consider The Advocate. Keep him or her in mind, as you read. More on that later.

On a recent Sunday, a day of rest for some at times, usually well deserved, some things coalesced into great takeaways to consider on a beautiful Monday morning, with Autumn just around the corner.

Besides other inspirational books, I read the Bible, and I believe in, and try to follow The Teacher, for how to contemplate important lessons on living what’s left of my life. Not for everybody, but quite a few, indeed. I try not to push my beliefs on others.

If another story about faith, and the arguments it frequently stirs up is upsetting, then one might be tempted to bypass it, as yet another tired old conflict that can sometimes become cringeworthy.

Take note, too, that this is not any advocacy of any denomination as being superior.

If deemed unworthy of further consideration, then skipping my tale is well within the rights of the free will we’ve all been given.

But if one cares to indulge, and contemplate a few discoveries, then read on, preferably with an open mind. That in itself might be challenging to many readers.

Thunder.

There currently exists a man, with a team of talented people surrounding him, who has taken on a wonderful project to enhance belief and understanding on this topic I”ve chosen to write about.

I admire him, holding a fondness for his talents he has gifted and shared with many, many people. It’s been said we think in pictures; this man helps with imaging.

For those who have dabbled in Christian faith practices, and struggled at times with the arguments for or against some of its principles, and maybe have difficulty rationalizing, or piecing together some of the stories in the Bible, this man creatively helps others in understanding, or at least entertaining ideas about how those stories could make more sense, for a greater understanding.

I’ll get back to him; his name is Dallas. For now, though, I wish to segue into one of many men named John.

One of the sons of Zebedee was loved by Christ, and went on to write one of the four Gospels, that explains some of the early teachings of Jesus, from John’s perspective.

John, along with his brother James, were fishermen under the tutelage of their father in the town of Capernaum, and friends of brothers Peter and Andrew, before The Lord urged them to follow Him. Why they were chosen as disciples is interesting, as depicted by that other great storyteller I noted as Dallas.

The Bible vaguely refers to James and John as the sons of thunder.

Why is creatively explained by Dallas and his team of writers because the two were painted as passionate men, quick to aggressively defend their Jewish heritage.

When Christ took some of His followers on a journey to Samaria, a known society that was hostile to Jews generally, Christ’s teachings take prominence with many tales of their interactions. The trip had its risks and dangers, due to the animosity between Jews and Samaritans, 2000+ years ago in that part of the world.

One example is when Jesus had a private interaction alone with the Samaritan woman at the town water supply that was a well dug by Jacob and his sons, in a noble endeavor from one of the Old Testament books. Another good scene in a different episode.

Another example is the story about the Good Samaritan who took pity on a Jew who had been beaten and robbed along a roadside in Samaria, where other hypocritical Jews and supposed men of honor passed by, avoiding the needy victim in that story.

There are modern parallels to society today, regarding most Jews, and most of the Goyim, with their propensity to label entire groups of people, painting all with a broad-brush condemnation for many of society’s ills.

Dallas Jenkins weaves these stories together very creatively, in season 2 of The Chosen, episode 1, titled “Thunder”.

In many instances, other episode scenes often will bring tears to the eyes of those who believe, and follow the teachings in the Bible NT about Christ’s ministry.

Using flashbacks of Old Testament precedence supports the stories in the New Testament masterfully by Jenkins and his team of writers, collaborators and actors, with realistic visual sets that reveal brief glimpses of notable scenes that enhance given episodes of the undertaking to strengthen one’s faith in our Savior and in Scripture.

We hear and see some folks who dismiss any savior coming to rescue us, in the modern mayhem, grief, and evil that surrounds us as a species.

Be it any potential political figure, a spiritual figure, or anyone else who might offer us hope for a brighter future.

Intelligent believers in Christ don’t take the moral high ground, in the aspect of claiming superiority over non-believers. Believers recognize that individuals have a choice, as free will was a gift to humanity granted by a God we believe in, as a source of Good that delivers us from evil, eventually. Good ones remain humble and kind, as much as possible.

One belief holds that Christ already has saved us, as He chose us, to help us understand, and be beacons of light to others, inspired to endure the difficulties of life on earth, and fight back against the darkness, during constant times of war, conflict, pain, suffering, and evil we experience. And yet He promised no living man a life totally free from trouble.

“You will have trouble in this world, hearing of wars and rumors of wars. But I am not of this world. You believe in the Father, the one who sent me. Believe in me also.”

Non-believers are nothing new. Even during the time of Christ, there were many who doubted. Many dismissed Him. Many saw Him as a threat to their way of thinking and practicing their own mistaken pious beliefs and practices, or lack thereof. Sadducees and Pharisees. Fellow Jews who rejected Christ, objecting to Him calling himself the son of God, able to forgive sins, and perform miracles, even as eyewitnesses to a few of the reported miracles performed. Claims of blasphemy emerged.

Ultimately, all miracles that happened were given as examples were redemptions of the spirituality of people whose faith had waned, for a variety of reasons.

The “Thunder” episode reveals how Fortina, the Samaritan lady at the well, doubted Jesus’ claim of being the Messiah they had waited for, until he spoke of knowing all about her many husbands, as depicted in an earlier episode from The Chosen. But in “Thunder”, she plays a key role in bringing others into belief and redemption.

The Thunder episode also weaves in one of the Samaritan perpetrators who beat and robbed the Jew victim traveling the roads of Samaria, as depicted in the biblical story of the Good Samaritan, who helped with care, transport, and lodging costs during rehab.

The point being, within the condemnation of wide swaths of a given culture, with less than noble treatment of other tribes, there exist exceptions to the rule, who do what is right, and good natured, during some interactions with other people, especially when empathy and courteous treatment is warranted.

Another scene in Thunder shows Z’s sons James and John walking with Christ while reluctantly in Samaria, when they run across some random Samaritans who despise Jews. They insult, taunt, and throw rocks at the three, one spitting upon John, which brings about a probable explanation of why J&J were labled sons of thunder.

The scene shows James and John reacting with hatred and a desire for violent retribution upon the Samaritans who disrespect and despise them, these 2 disciples seeing them as unworthy of consideration, and more worthy of punishment for their hatred.

Jesus gets upset with them, for wanting God to bring down fire to consume the Samaritans who hated the Jews so much.

This, after Christ instructed J&J to spend an afternoon of hard labor clearing and planting a field, they mistakenly believe to be a potter’s field to benefit hungry travelers at harvest time. Their effort led them to claim superiority over the other disciples, and conflict among them emerges, another frequent theme depicted in The Chosen, as His disciples struggle to grasp difficult lessons, pulled by doubt, infighting, and previous life experiences dealing with the difficult among our fellow man.

Later, after being admonished by Jesus for their anger tendencies, the boys, along with other followers, go with Jesus to take dinner supplies to the home of a poor, crippled man.

Afterward, the man, his wife, and daughter, while seated around a night time campfire, only then do the disciples learn, much to their initial dismay, but later understanding of a lesson, that the crippled Samaritan man’s misfortune was due to being thrown off of the stolen horse of the Jew traveling through Samaria, who was beaten and robbed by the man and an accomplice. The crippled man’s name is Marek, who admits his past, in his own story of the reasons for his physical and mental anguish for his mistreatment of the Jewish victim he fears he probably murdered.

When Marek asks why Jesus chose him for helping an unworthy felon,

Jesus reassures him that his victim survived, and Jesus reveals the parable of finding one lost sheep among 100, for the benefit and celebration of redeeming one who has lost his way, but ultimately becames reborn, a concept Nicodemus struggled to get.

A parallel fable is the story of the prodigal son, lost to greed, only to return home.

But Marek’s feeling about being unworthy of James and John’s labor to revitalize his growing field, and Christ’s belief and desire of Marek being worthy of redemption, results in an unbroadcast realization that his crippled, broken leg is miraculously healed overnight, after Jesus and the disciples depart. Thus Marek, the former thug, becomes a new Samaritan follower of the Lord, through experiencing extremely difficult hardship, albeit from perhaps mistakes many make, on how to treat his fellow man, in his case particularly a Jew who he believed worthy of mistreatment, in light of his own needs.

Another episode has similar lessons for the eventual disciple Simon the zealot, who was a trained assassin, redeemed after witnessing the healing of his older brother, the paralytic that tried for years to drag himself into a pool that occasionally stirred up currents, which were believed to hold healing properties.

Later in the Thunder episode, Marek, his wife, and daughter attend Jesus’ teachings in synagogue in Samaria, where Jesus privately comforts John, getting his help in choosing which Old Testament scroll to read. Remember John and James felt humbleness, in being taught and reprimanded by Christ for their anger tendencies, and to see the larger picture of what Jesus tried to instill in His followers.

Then the episode shifts back to the opening scene of Thunder, where John is seated at a table, on a stormy night, recalling the early days, trying to write down the lessons learned, in the beginning of Christ’s ministry. This scene obviously depicts a time after Jesus’ death and rise from the dead, into eternal life.

John is trying to write what will become his Gospel, of his account of the teachings, and how it all began, by enlisting the help of all the other disciples, and what they remember from the early days of thier chosen enlightenment. In the beginning was the Word.

In this manner, Dallas Jenkins’ team bounces around with scenes in episodes, much like the style of Quentin Tarantino, with flashbacks, and future scenes that weave together characters and storytelling that makes a viewer grasp how simple examples in the Bible interconnect, and offer viable explanations of feasibility for belief.

Other episodes are chock full of meaningful drama, including all the doubt, struggles, redemptions, and joy as experienced by those who were intimately close to Jesus Christ, and took great effort to abandon what most people chase after in their lives, to prioritize the more important things to gather from a belief, a knowing; an enlightenment of what can be gleaned from studying and learning from the lessons He tried to convey to humans, when He was sent down to earth by the Father, to take human form for a while.

Then as promised, He told them after He was gone, that he would send an Advocate;

the Paraclete, in spiritual form, to guide believers further, on how to live in our times.

As Christ promised Fortina, the Samaritan lady at the well, it isn’t about where we worship, nor which religious practices are deemed superior or inferior, but moreso about expressing gratitude for gifts and knowledge given, with Spirit, as the Bible describes God.

The risen Christ breathed the Holy Spirit upon them when he appeared in the days shortly after his death, still fresh on the minds of all the disciples while still in Jerusalem, in hiding, for fear of their own deaths and misery at the hands of TPTB at the time.

Still more episodes of The Chosen depict the enlightenment of Nicodemus, the Pharisee leader and teacher who instinctively sees the unusual teachings and miracles of Christ as the true Messiah, promised in Old Testament predictions of the One who was to come. Nicodemus being brave, in his beliefs, unlike other Pharisees at the time.

Likewise, the other John…John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, who was given to the formerly barren, elderly woman Elizabeth, who Mother Mary visited, while pregnant with Jesus.

Among His disciples while in Samaria are 2 female followers: Mary; the redeemed, suicidal rape victim, former drunk, ghetto whore, and gambler prone to bouts of violent mental anguish in Capernaum, and also the wine vintner who’s reputation was saved, along with the doubting Thomas, who were in charge of supplying food & wine at the wedding feast in Cana, where Mother Mary begs Christ to provide a solution to the banquet’s hosts, when the wine supply runs embarassingly low during that celebration, in the tale of Jesus’s 1st miracle peformed, recognized by a few of his followers, and more to come.

So, too, a black Egyptian woman, who witnessed the instant healing of a leper outcast of society, who eventually brings a paralytic friend through the roof at Zebedee’s house, to be healed by Christ during a popular lesson near the Red Quarter, where Pharisees and Romans were on constant vigilence to squelch large gatherings with prophets holding court, as it were. The character of Matthew the tax collector, as an eccentric savant mathematician hated by fellow Jews is an amazing transformation of acceptance.

The Chosen is in my humble opinon, a fascinating endeavor to understand the types of small world events, with very interesting characters who interact, in formerly difficult to understand ways, as told vaguely in Scripture.

Too many characters to list, in my slice of a story written here.

The good aspects of Christianity are being spread with huge success, by Dallas Jenkins, gathering more of the faithful with crowd funding and exponential growth, as seasons and episodes continue, at the time of my writing.

If one has any inkling of curiosity on this topic, I highly recommend researching and absorbing an example of worthy entertainment and learning about the topic more.

Costs are small. The Chosen offers a free app one can download to watch seasons and episodes already completed, and spreading like wildfire among believers of such. There are many more fantastic episodes depicting the greatest story ever told. Addicting.

The only true ‘cost’ is one’s time investment, but it will pay dividends in spades, and potential fans will have to trust me on the recommendation.

I don’t equate myself with Jesus, but I do count myself as one of his students.

I now see that “Trust in Me” was not His advice to save me from this world, where He told us we’d continue to endure pain, struggles and hardship. But in the end, He promised us deliverance from evil, which in itself is a glorious thing to hope for, and look forward to, after our time here on earth passes.

In the meantime, He offers techniques on how to think, believe, express faith, how to behave, and how to successfully endure, while exhibiting a Grace and a willingness to treat others as we wish to be treated.

“Sin / sins” as described in the Bible are misunderstood by many. The term is interpreted by some as actions, thoughts or experiences of evil unjustly hatched, or rained down upon us by a mean God, who punishes mankind in some type of sadistic disciplinary experience, along the lines of karma, or sowing what we reap as consequences.

I view “sin” as an archery term, meaning to miss the mark.

That is, to mistakenly think or behave in thoughts or ways that conflict with what our Source of all that is good advises, for a viable way of living.

Detractors dismiss a Supreme, loving source as a fictitious folly, who, if existed, should remove all the pain and suffering and evil experienced by many innocent victims.

That supposition dismisses the unknown mysteries, and arrogantly assume a superior knowledge, with questioning why a God would allow such, if He is truly loving and forgiving of those who seek Him. Many skeptics refuse to take evidence others experienced.

“Let those with eye see, and ears hear.”

His ultimate gifts include the free will mankind is allowed, which many have taken advantage of to think and act in ways that do not foster good will, but act to vehemently oppose it, and follow a contradictory influence, ever present to tempt humans into evil.

Other gifts He promised us were forgiveness for sins (missed marks with thinking, beliefs, & actions), and

eternal life after bodily death and decay, to those who choose to learn, and follow His commandments as good guidelines and advisories to live by. Glorious victories.

Acceptance of His will is an acquired humbleness during difficult times, with a belief that Christ God can manifest miraculous healing and grace, after emerging from some of the harshest experinces in our lives, often thought of as unjust or undeserved punishment.

It’s not ours to know the why? of some things with no easy explanations.

Perhaps one day, some of us are fortunate enough to see the good than can come from such pain and endurance, after holding rare acceptance and beliefs through challenges to our faith, as difficult as it can be. Forgiveness falls into this category as a very difficult thing to practice. Others see no potential benefit. Ever. Yet vengeance is His, He told us

Personally, I’ve looked back upon misfortunes, and initially hostile interactions and experiences with fellow men & women, only to result in bonds and friendships, where discovery of common ground is realized, and cherished for the beauty those episodes deliver.

When we pass from this existence, maybe too, all of our questions, doubts, and failures to comprehend viable explanations will be ultimately revealed and understood.

Maybe when we get to the next level, we will be taught the reasons and answers to difficult problems as experienced on earth.

Or, maybe we’ll be in such a state of bliss, we’ll have no rememberance or need to remember the pain, the questions, or the mysterious answers that elude so many, in wondering why.

Either option posits a chance of the Glory that is to come.

Is entertainment of such possibilities fruitless? Maybe, in some opinions, it’s bunk.

My take is, those belief possibilities and as-yet-unfulfilled promises can’t hurt.

I’d rather believe in Him, life after death, with bliss in paradise, than to not believe, and then be at risk of being embarrassingly, and stubbornly wrong, in failing to believe in Him, if my spirit and soul should ultimately come face to face with the One who gave me all blessings.

I’ve learned quite a few times, that miracle healings can emerge out of tragedies, when He manifests blessings in disguise. Those moments reinforce attempts at Trust in Him.

If you’ve made it this far, I Thank You for reading.

Gratitude is an underrated aspect of life that many, many more ought to adopt.

I’d urge readers to Go, and do likewise. Focus on what is truly, truly important.

Don’t hide your light under a bushel; rather put it on a lampstand to be a shining example for others to see. As often as possible. It offers others Hope, a good thing.

I haven’t mastered it completely; very few do. Your efforts shall be noticed.

May the Peace of God our Father, the Love of Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all. The Trinity. One God; three forms. A sign of the cross.

In parting, I’d also urge some to seek, find, and re-read all 3 verses of the Serenity Prayer. It’s pure gold. Desiderata, and the Lord’s Prayer, as well. Many others, also too numerous to list here.

With all due respect,

The spirit in me salutes the spirit in you, and any common ground we share.

Cheers.

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