January 22, 2007
Jesus' Attitude
Recently some people challenged Joel and I about being too negative and critical. Joel's response was to point out that we are negative and critical because there is so much that is bad and negative in the world around us. Also, Joel pointed out that Jesus himself was considered a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and that he was often negative and critical. The people challenging us were very opposed to Joel's characterization of Jesus. They challenged Joel to prove his claim. Being convinced of our correctness on this issue we decided to do just that. I skimmed Matthew, Mark and the beginning of Revelation and Joel skimmed Luke and John. We each recorded any mention of Jesus' emotions (if it was obvious) and instances where Jesus was critical or complimentary of people . Here are our results:
Instances of critical comments by Jesus: 130
Instances of complimentary comments by Jesus: 45
Obvious emotions of Jesus
frustration: 14
sorrow: 3
troubled: 3
anger: 5
distressed: 1
compassion: 1
rejoice: 1
agony: 1
displeasure:1
pity: 3
grief: 3
Now obviously anyone that created a list like this would come out with slightly different numbers and slightly different descriptions of Jesus' emotions. Overall I think that it would be hard to come up with a count that contradicted our conclusions. If you don't believe me then I challenge you to do a count and post your results. One thing to note about these numbers is that the affirming comments number is greatly inflated by the compliments that Jesus gives to the seven church at the beginning of Revelation. That section of Revelation had 15 compliments and only 7 criticisms. That means that Jesus, as presented in the gospels, is 4 times more critical then affirming.
I had a lot of fun doing this assignment. I noticed that Jesus' criticisms are usually directed at the rich, those that think that they are righteous, and those that lack faith. His compliments are for those that show faith and people that show humility. I think that it has reminded me of what pleases Jesus and what definitely doesn't. Another thing that I noticed is that Jesus often makes very critical comments in his anger. We're often led to believe that responding with criticism in anger is sinful. I'm not sure how often what comes out of my mouth when I'm angry is not sin. This observation at least shows me though that responding critically in anger is not always sin. I think that I'm going to try to do more survey type studies in the future.
Posted by rose at January 22, 2007 10:25 AM