Just how unlike struck me again recently. Upon reviewing the account of the widow of Nain, recorded in Luke chapter 7, a particular sentence popped out at me. As a recap of the story, Jesus and a crowd of his followers have reached the gate of a village and are blocked by a funeral procession for a dead boy. As the wailers cry out, and the casket is being hoisted aloft, we are told of the boy\u2019s mother, a widow. Suddenly, \u201cwhen the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her.\u201d<\/p>\n
There it is! These are the words that on a casual reading can drift by unnoticed, but in fact are shocking and set Christianity apart from other religions. As the crowd later gasps upon seeing Jesus perform the miracle of restoring life to the boy: \u201cGod has visited his people!\u201d<\/p>\n
Jesus \u201csaw\u201d her. And more than that he noticed. He perceived her, with a gaze that pierces flesh and bone to see what is inside the mind, the soul. An old Anglican prayer begins, \u201cAlmighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid\u2026\u201d God sees you and notices you.<\/p>\n
God isn\u2019t some Unmoved Mover. He is not aloof, but rather is deeply and intricately involved in our lives. As those townspeople proclaimed, God has indeed visited His people. He came to us not as a vision or an idea, but as a person who could be seen, heard, touched, and mistreated. Furthermore, God notices<\/em> individuals, and has compassion upon their plight. In other passages of the Gospels we see Jesus being moved to tears at the death of a friend, and showing anger at injustice. This is what sets Christianity apart from other belief systems.<\/p>\n It is radically different from other ancient religions, which had pantheons of gods who were a bit like Marvel\u2019s Thanos, or larger scale versions of the pretenders for the Iron Throne of Westeros (a \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d reference there). These were arrogant, morally impaired, entitled beings jockeying for power, who would not even notice a commoner (unless perhaps an unusually attractive maiden might arouse some sexual interest now and then). Such \u201cgods\u201d don\u2019t approach you, rather you approach them, if you dare, and if you are somehow unusually worthy. They would not grieve for the death of a widow\u2019s son.<\/p>\n This care and concern for individuals also differentiates Christianity from eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, which would suggest that everything we see and experience, including our griefs and sufferings, are merely illusions superimposed on some deeper reality, and that the way forward is to detach from this world. This deeper reality doesn\u2019t notice you, because there isn\u2019t really a \u201cyou\u201d to notice.<\/p>\n This touching little story in Luke could be seen a microcosm of the Gospel. God notices you, has compassion upon you in your current state of weakness and pain. God not only notices, but approaches. Further, he reaches out and touches the spiritually lifeless, bringing healing and new life where previously there was none.<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My temptation is not so much toward a disbelief in God as toward a belief in an impersonal and philosophical God, a necessary being that is unknown and unknowable\u2014something like the \u201cfirst cause\u201d of Plato and Aquinas. Such a being would answer the philosophical mysteries of our existence, and that of the universe, and yet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1186,340,77,1185],"class_list":["post-2523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-comparative-religion","tag-jesus","tag-love","tag-widow-of-nain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2524,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theundergroundchurch.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}