The Challenge of Jesus

I don't even remember why I have started reading NT Wright's books, I bought this book long ago but did not start reading it until yesterday. Last night, I was discussing the whole CU student newspaper incident with a friend and thinking about where we should set our boundary.

Then I thought, "What would Jesus do?" One would say Jesus would have loved them, one would say Jesus would scold them, but what was Jesus' priority?

Then I dug this book out from my TBR pile, and started reading.

For those of you who are not familiar with NT Wright is doing in his quest for historical Jesus, let me start by this intro. (Reading his books are definitely eye-opening for me, you would start to realise stuff like rapture may never happen, NOT because the Bible is a story book, but because we've been interpreting the whole thing wrongly.)

Wright challenges us to roll up our sleeves and take seriously the study of the historical Jesus. He writes, "Many Christians have been, frankly, sloppy in their thinking and talking about Jesus, and hence, sadly, in their praying and in their practice of discipleship. We cannot assume that by saying the word Jesus, still less the word Christ, we are automatically in touch with the real Jesus who walked and talked in first-century Palestine. . . . Only by hard, historical work can we move toward a fuller comprehension of what the Gospels themselves were trying to say."

The Challenge of Jesus poses a double-edged challenge: to grow in our understanding of the historical Jesus within the Palestinian world of the first century, and to follow Jesus more faithfully into the postmodern world of the twenty-first century.

I have only read the first chapter. Unexpectedly, the first chapter answered one of the questions my friend and I discussed on how to read the Bible. She was puzzled by how to answer people's accusation that the Bible is indecent.

Sounds interesting?? Afraid that the book will be daunting?? Well, Wright's books are easy to read, and this book is NOT a scholarly book, this is the reason why I bought this one instead of Jesus and the Victory of God.

Something interesting I found on the web while trying to find the excerpt of the first chapter (to save myself some trouble in typing it =P), I came across this.

I rang Tom Wright in January 2001 having just skimmed one chapter of The Challenge Of Jesus, on walking with Jesus on the road to Emmaus in the postmodern world. Or something like that. I had just bought four tomes of his, including the two much much bigger ones, JVG and NTPG. To everyone's surprise who's heard the story I not only got through but had about 25 minutes of conversation with the big man.

He was especially interested in what I had made of the first chapter of his I had read. I wasn't able to say much of great import but I was struck by how much Tom wanted to know if he had been effective in communicating to one rather dim-witted lay-person.

Well, he's such a writer, so don't worry, start reading!

And this is where I've found the excerpt. And for a taste of his works, go to his website, here.