Jesus, Smartest Man in the World

Rudolf Bultmann, long regarded as one of the great leaders of the twentieth-century thought, had this to say: "It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles."

Impossible. Oh really? To quote my dear friend Inigo: "I do no' sink dat word means what you sink it means."

To anyone who has worked through the relevant arguments, this statement is simply laughable. It only shows that great people are capable of great silliness.

We've just spent the last three months exploring how people are living life in this world upside. These are the people trying to tell us that they are not only flying right side up, but that followers of Christ are the ones flying upside down. I might be concerned here if in fact these people could show me lives that they were living which were completely fulfilled, satisfying, purposeful, meaningful, and full of goodness and love and hope. 

They cannot.


They love to point to "life-saving" and "time-saving" machines and philosophies. "Why throw away your life on religion," they ask, "when you could be living a life that's worth throwing away." Read that statement again if you missed my point. It should be quite clear by this point in time, that the greatest minds of the twenty-first century and before still have not given us anything worth rejoicing about. How is it any better to be alive now than it was two thousand years ago if your still unsatisfied with the life you get to live?

Many will be astonished at such a remark, but you can be very sure that nothing fundamental has changed in our knowledge of ultimate reality and the human self since the time of Jesus.

Read carefully those above words. Nothing has changed in our knowledge of the human self. That's a bold claim. It also just so happens to be true. Christ came teaching and preaching that we humans live lives that are unfulfilled, unsatisfactory, and missing the point. He said we spend our days chasing after valueless things like fame and fortune, both of which leave us desiring something more and both of which will fade away in the blink of an eye. He said that because our priorities are focused on the wrong things we miss out on the abundant life right in front of us.


Jesus' work and teaching, as well as the main path of historical Christianity that sprang from him, is essentially based upon the substantial reality of the spirit and spiritual world.

And the substantial reality of the spiritual world has NOT changed in two thousand years. It's still one and the same. The great fictional character Dr. Gregory House famously quips that "people don't change." I disagree with that profusely, but I would agree with the more general statement that "humanity doesn't change." And hasn't changed. And won't change. We are spiritual beings missing out on the spiritual world in which we live, and Jesus knew that from the beginning. 


Once you stop to think about it, how could he be what we take him to be and not be the best-informed and most intelligent person of all, the smartest person who ever lived?

Our greatest minds have spent centuries trying to reinvent a wheel that Jesus has always been riding on. Like a stock car in a horse derby, he is racing ahead of the competition while they meagerly fight for who is first loser.

So here's a question: why don't we look to him for more answers to our life questions? Questions such as:

What should I do with my life?

What kind of career should I have?

How should I raise my children?

How can I best love my spouse?

How should I treat others?

How should I handle my money?

Maybe we've asked and trusted God with a few of those questions, but usually we like to stop it after one or two, thinking that Jesus' words couldn't possibly have any impact on other areas of my life in this modern world.

It is not possible to trust Jesus in matters where we do not believe him to be competent. But can we seriously imagine that Jesus could be Lord if he were not smart? If he were divine, would he be dumb? Or uninformed?

Take Christ to be the smartest man who ever lived, stop listening to the advice of "experts" of the field, and you will realize why some Christians go to such an extent to ignore what seems like common sense to the rest of the world.


This confidence in his intellectual greatness is the basis of the radicalism of Christ-following in relation to the human order.

"But," you argue vehemently, "Jesus wasn't a molecular biologist, or a financial consultant, or a rocket scientist!"

Not officially. But could any rocket science or molecular biologist you know do this:

Jesus knew how to transform the molecular structure of water to make it wine. That knowledge also allowed him to take a few pieces of bread and some little fish and feed thousands of people. He could create matter from the energy he knew how to access from "the heavens," right where he was. He knew how to transform the tissues of the human body from sickness to health and from death to life. He knew how to suspend gravity and interrupt weather patterns. He only needed a word.

I didn't think so.

So it cannot be surprising that the feeding of the thousands led the crowds to try to force him to be their king. Let us now hear his teachings on who has the good life, on who is among the truly blessed. 


And that, my friends, will be the focus of Chapter 4. Until next week, I bid you good reading.