What or Whom?

Another great chapter from "The Christ of the Indian Road," is titled: What or Whom? Are we to believe in the "what" of our faith or is it centered upon a "whom?" Stanley Jones puts it sharply that we believe in a whom & not a series of whats.

Here are five great quotes from the book:

"Christianity with a what-emphasis is bound to be divisive, but this tendency is lessened with a whom-emphasis. Note the things that have created denominations in the west: baptism, human freedom, rites, ceremonies, dress--the points of division have been nearly all "whats."

"Only life can lift life. A doctor lay dying--a Christian doctor sat beside him & urged him to surrender & have faith in Christ. The dying doctor listened in amazement. Light dawned. He joyously said, 'All my life I have been bothered by what to believe, & now I see it is whom to trust.' Life lifted life."

"But the statement made above about Jesus coming out of an uninspired Book must be corrected a bit, for Jesus did not come out of the Book; it came out of Him. It did not create Him; He created it."

" We must call men not to loyalty to a belief but loyalty to a Person. We may be loyal to a belief & be dead spiritually, but we cannot be loyal to this Person & be other than alive spiritually. He creates belief. We do not get Jesus from our beliefs, we get our beliefs from Jesus."

"There is no real danger lest Jesus be lost among the many in all this, that it may end up in his being put in the Pantheon of Hinduism. Greece & Rome tried that & the Pantheons amid which he was placed are gone--Jesus lives on. He is dynamic, disruptive, explosive like the soft tiny rootlets that rend the monuments of man's pride. Like the rootlets he quietly goes down into the crannies of men's thinking, & lo, old forms & customs are broken up. Absorb him? you may as well talk about the moist earth in springtime absorbing the seed. The seed absorbs it, for it is life. Jesus is life. He will take care of himself."

Thanks E. Stanley Jones.