A Jesus Joke

It's always a wonderful feeling when you find out that someone has used one of your products or books, and that it has been useful in stimulating their thinking.

This I discovered today when I went to the blog of John Alwyine-Mosely, whose site is called A Tentative Quaker. His post "A Quaker Doing Theology" is about his use of the Creative Whack Pack to deal with this question:

What's your
experience, practice
or views of God?

During his exploration of this question, John realized that he needs to avoid being "over-rational and intellectual" about the experience of God. And he shares this joke about Jesus which I think is just wonderful:

And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?"

They replied,

"You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.”

"You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.”

"You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming roughness’ in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.”

“You are my Oppressed One, my soul's shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”

And Jesus replied, "Huh?"

This cracked me up. How easy it is to get trapped in our own words and concepts — especially the complex ones — and miss out on the experience of what's actually happening. (Variations of this joke could be applied to a lot of different fields.)

Comments

[Liz Strauss]

Excuse, me . . . um, could you go over that one more time? :)

[Stephen Denny]

Great post and great point. Simplicity above all.

[Eric Herman]

>>It's always a wonderful feeling when you find out that someone has used one of your products or books, and that it has been useful in stimulating their thinking.

Hey, Roger. I've been meaning to tell you that I referenced you twice in a recent blog article - http://cooltunesforkids.blogspot.com/2007/05/return-of-return-of-son-of-bride-of.html

Very best,
Eric

[Eric Herman]

Whoops... I guess that link was too long. Well, the article is at cooltunesforkids.com and is currently the second post down, titled "The Return of the Return of the Son of the Bride of the Idea Tree".

[jonny]

genius and sadly too recognisable!

[Hadi]

that's so complicated to understand! u could try a more easier jokes to understand in http://ambatchmasterpublisher-youtub.blogspot.com/

[Sean]

when i saw the link for a Jesus joke, I was expecting something more along these lines:

Why can't Jesus ride the bus?
The exact change keeps falling through the holes in his hands.

or that one with the punchline "Paul....I can see your house from up here."

[Mustard]

Funny, and sure, over-intellectualizing can take us away from experiencing life. But sometimes "what's actually happening" is happening in the world of the mind.

Pausing for thought can be a way of engaging with the nuances of life, a subtler and more gratifying response to situations than rushing into unconsidered action.

[Sneha Abraham]

i've heard variations of this joke and always appreciated it myself. if even god doesn't get it, perhaps we missed the point?

[husna]

Wait wait wait!...
Are all "Jesus Jokes" so complicated?
It's wayyy to difficult for a "high school mind" to understand whatz meant by this article... A little simpler language and terminology would help make it more interesting:)
nyways... it was gud coz at least now i know dat i can READ buh not GET anything:p haha