Why Jesus? It's Got to Do with Attitude.

[HKHaugan]

In order to really answer this question we have to look at the individual human condition. Three things standout about the common human condition, aloneness, our perceived needs in that aloneness and how we deal with them. For now we’ll look at aloneness. From here on we will deal with needs and how we meet them.

The human condition is one of being born into a growing awareness of individual self-conscious aloneness, the needs arising from that aloneness, and facing the fact that the only answers to our visible dilemma are invisible. Action, a teenage hood calling for a gang fight in the musical tragedy West Side Story, is confronted by a local candy store owner who looks at him disgustedly and says, “When I was your age…” Action interrupts him shouting angrily, “When you was my age, when my father was my age, when my mother was my age…you ain’t never been my age.” Action is shouting for all of us. None of us has ever really been like anyone else. Right now is when I am alive. No one has ever been alive like me. It doesn’t matter what other people are like, old, young, adults, kids, men, women, fathers, mothers---I’m the center of my experience and no one really knows me, has been like me or ever will be. What do I do with me? What am I all about? Action’s only hope was to be part of a gang, a gang that’s tough, a gang that’s number one.

We are all born in a body, alone inside, never understanding or really grasping what is on anyone’s else’s mind. We all may have been young once but no one is ever the same in that youth or at any other stage of life. We are all born uniquely, live individually and relate personally the best we can. As we view one another it is all guesswork and assumption. People are ultimately mysteries to one another. And here's why, the language we speak is really an attitudinal expression. The language may be the words we use but the words express an attitude. When we speak what is the attitude behind our words? Attitude is what is really going on in our hearts. When we are trying to understand the words we need to be aware there is an attitude behind them that requires not answering the words as much as answering the attitude behind them. What attitudes did you see when you read Action's tirade?

Attitude is the important thing to remember because attitude reflects the spiritual condition behind what is being said. The problem with attitude is how it fluctuates from one attitude to another depending on the need of the moment. When we feel alone that dominates the way we think and speak. If our emotions are confronted we learn the limits of attitudinal expression and may never be honest in the circumstance that needs an honest reply. Then the way our words are used become dialects of emotion, as in struggling for acceptance, fearing rejection, defensive response, condescension, alert silence, fake approval and cautionary smiles. Their purpose? Self-protection. That’s what makes our human word languages so frustrating. They never seem to adequately express the heart's deeper sense of the need to communicate who and what we really are.

Ask parents why their kids seem like strangers to them from time to time. Ask kids why they believe their parents don’t understand them. Extend this into communities and nations and the problem of understanding and being understood is magnified beyond anyone’s ability to relieve it. It's all that invisible attitudinal struggle within. This is what makes Jesus such a real answer to the problem of attitude. Everything He said and did was the expression of a totally honest, stable and confident attitude. The NIV Bible quotes Paul, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus... (Php.2:5).” This an incredible statement. Note that it is a single attitude and doesn't shift depending on circumstance. He approached every situation with the same attitude. He maintained that attitude wherever and with whomever He was with.

Now just what is that attitude? Paul elaborates, “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross (Php.2:6-8).”

Look at the specifics of His attitude. He was God the Son, equal with the Father but did not use that position of equality to promote Himself. Compare that to our name-dropping need to impress others or our struggle to find our place of recognition, position and social status based on pride. Instead He became His Father's servant by becoming a human being totally obedient to His Father from birth to death. That was the singular attitude that motivated Him.

He was obedient to His Father's will in every next moment, every next situation and every next event in His life. He didn't adjust to the attitudes and opinions of others. He didn't fear hostility and death. He was quick to answer whenever the occasion made it necessary. He was silent when that was called for. But for every day of His earthly life there was that consistently present attitude of pleasing His Father by doing His will. Even if it meant death which eventually it did.

Regardless of the challenge, He never let the growing lack of understanding and alienation on the part of family, nation, religious leadership and foreign authority, compromise the awareness of His mission. His mission was His Father's will personally, spiritually and relationally. He was the same person with the same attitude and the same mission every day, in fact, every next moment. His obedience was based on prayer and Scripture lived through the Holy Spirit. His humility was not based on the admiration or manipulation of others. The difference between His humility and ours is we try looking humble for selfish reasons like hiding our fear of rejection. This produces a variety of negative self-serving attitudes.

Jesus illustrates an important insight here. He wasn't trying to be humble. He was absorbed in obeying His Father's will regardless of the people He was with or what the circumstance was. His concentration was on pleasing His Father. That's true humility. The goal is not humility. It's working with the goal in mind through which humility happens. Love is not the goal but result of what happens when our goal is to serve Jesus. The way, the truth and the life are not goals but the result of letting Jesus be the center of every next moment. That's how our attitudes can be replaced by His one attitude.

The mistake we humans make is that by attitudes that work to satisfy a moment we think we can achieve the qualities of His character without His help to define and empower them. We think we can be good, moral and productive without Him. We assume because we want to be right intentionally and assume whatever attitude works for the moment of need, that will work relationally, spiritually and personally without their true source. It didn't work for Adam and Eve and history has proven that fallacy every since. Just look at the wars, divisions in nations, communities, families, ethnicity, religion and the brokenness in every human heart, all of which illustrate the problem of a created humanity operating apart from its Creator.

Mankind needs a deliverer; a mind deliverer, a heart deliverer and a spirit deliverer. But it is not to a generic concept of mankind as though just an appearance would make the difference. NO! It had to be for each heart, uniquely and personally and relationally. That's how each human being comes into existence. As an image of God each person has a mind, a heart and a spirit made to live relationally with God and one another. Only a deliverer connected to the source with that nature and singular attitude of perfect spiritual service could meet those qualifications. Jesus, God the Son, did just that. God Himself in Jesus Christ came to make Himself available to every heart to live by faith in Him just as He lived by faith in His Father. Faith in Him is the singular attitude for which we were made. This is another 'Why Jesus?' answer.