This was a super interesting chapter for me. Wright looked in depth at the person of Jesus and almost his relationship to himself as a Messiah. The interesting part to me was that John Mark preached on the crucified messiah this last week at church, so the whole time I was reading this chapter I had John Mark running through my head.
This was good, but at the same time Wright went very deep very quickly in this chapter. He didn't have the space to flesh out everything he's thinking, but at the same time, all the different aspects of what he's saying about what Jesus believed about himself were hard to track for me.
In his conclusion, Wright brought up two common objections, which was interesting because they were my two objections to the chapter. One, that there's no way that we can know what Jesus was thinking back then, and two, that how does it really affect our walk with Christ today?
His answer to the first was basically that a strong case can be made for what he just argued. To the second he posits that we want to know the real Jesus don't we? As Christians we should want to know the real Jesus rather than some idol that we've made him out to be.
Usually I really love Wright's thinking. But in this chapter he was hard to swallow. This is for two reasons, 1) because a lot of what he was saying is hard for me to digest without doing my own research. and 2) I feel almost insulted that I'm not seeking the "true" Jesus by not taking everything he says at face value.
I respect his opinion on what Jesus was thinking during that time, and he is probably right! But at he same time, I haven't done enough research of my own on this topic to know if what he's saying is worth trusting or not. Until then, I must remain resigned to the other areas of study to which I have committed myself to.
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