What if God was One of Us?

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There’s a well-known pop song that goes, ‘What if God was one of us … ’. If you are a disciple of Jesus, you’ve probably wondered about that quite often. What if Jesus was among us today?

I’d love to think that I would have sat at his feet, in awe of his new kind of wisdom and grace, allowing it to sweep over me. But I fear I would have been like a pharisee—keeping Jesus at a distance, looking for an opportunity to catch him in ‘heresy’.

I was recently listening to a podcast with revered addictions specialist psychologist Dr Gabor Mate. In the middle of this secular interview, he began to reflect on the nature of grace. ‘From a sceptical doggedly atheist point of view, you’ll see these “saints” [people who live fully in grace] as epileptics like St Hildegaard, and people having strange experiences. But, actually, their brains are just more open to experiences that, for most of us, our ego is too much in the way … But sometimes these people manifest such compassion and love that people are just drawn to be around them.’

It struck me that he could have been describing people’s reactions to Jesus Christ—was he insane, or enlightened? Was he from God or the devil? We must get our dogma and ego out of the way, in order to see the real Jesus.

Jesus is, in fact, among us today. I hope we have the open eyes to see him as he really is.

Ingrid Barratt
Editor

Bible verse

John 1:17
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Hoani 1:17
Nā Mohi hoki i hōmai te ture; ko te aroha noa me te pono i ahu mai i a Īhu Karaiti.