One of the reasons Jesus called himself the Son of Man is the name’s vagueness. The title can simply mean “human”; this is the way the prophet Ezekiel seems to be using it during the many times he refers to himself in this way.

There is no possible way this seemingly innocuous usage could land Jesus in trouble with the authorities. But on the other hand, the title “Son of Man” probably mainly refers to a very important prophecy in Daniel 7, where one “like a son of man” comes and stands before God, and God gives him dominion and power so that all the nations serve him - a kingdom that will never pass away.

This strange personage is a human (“like a son of man”) but is also worshiped (“all peoples…should serve him”). Jesus knows that he is truly human, but he uses the title Son of Man to emphasize that he is more than that - he is also the one true God who is worthy of worship.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Because love is not primarily an emotional disposition toward someone else but is instead about self-sacrificial actions, trust is baked into such a relationship. We come to know and love someone precisely by trusting in that person enough to get close enough to live in intimacy with them.

This sort of relationship intentionally reflects the inner life of the Trinity, where the three persons of the divine Oneness completely love and trust each other. Unfortunately, in human relationships, sometimes the sin which colors any relationship mars the trust which maybe once defined a relationship. The love might be there, but in such a case the trust has been damaged. This should, however, be seen as a weird, suspended state of a broken relationship, with the goal to be restoring the trust which makes the loving relationships whole again. The model for this is Jesus, who loved us so much he won our trust in him.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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All the statistics point to an increase in acts of aggression and violent crime in our society. But why is this happening? Secular thinkers used to opine that religion exacerbated violence; the theory being that commitment to absolute truth would cause people to insist that their viewpoint must be adhered to and that violence would be the tool most readily used by close-minded bigots to force others to change. But the twentieth-century gave the lie to this notion - instead of the religious zealots being the violent ones, it turns out that the atheists and pagans (from Lenin to Stalin to Hitler to Pol Pot to Mao) have been most guilty of acts of violence and that frequently against people of religion.

In other words, secularism seems to be less of a bulwark against violence than it is a foundation for it. But why would this be? Chuck and Aaron discuss how belief in absolute truth creates the possibility of rational discourse as a tool to persuade others, but a lack of belief in God lends itself to an abandonment of the hope of using logic as a means of personal contact. This makes education hopeless, and the only tool left for personal persuasion is power. The end result, unfortunately, has all too frequently been violence.

For Christians, the hope of peace can only be found in the God who personally took on the violence of this world but didn’t respond in kind, who absorbed the physical terrorism of the Roman Empire, absorbed it, and loved in return. If Christians can model for our culture what it means to live in the God who eschewed violence for self-sacrificial love, and if Christians can recommit to the truth which comes from the God who is the Truth Incarnate and persuades others with relational love instead of force, then the Christian church can become a paradigm for how the world can run on peace and not violence.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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