A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [110]
He has just said, “Don’t be troubled. Trust God, trust me.” Now he repeats the reassurance, saying in essence:
Listen, Thomas, your head is spinning. You don’t need to understand all this. You simply need to trust me. Don’t look for a way apart from me. Don’t look for a route or destination—some concept or technique or system of thought that will get you through the tough time that is coming. I’m not trying to give you information or instructions so you no longer need me and can instead depend on the information or instructions. No—just trust me. Everything you need is in me. I will be gone, but then I will be back again and we will be together. “The way” and “the truth” and “the life” aren’t things separate from me. I am these things, so you’ll find them in me! Whether or not you know what I’ve been talking about, if you know me, you know the Father, you know the way, you know the truth, you know the life.
But what of “No one comes to the Father except through me”? Clearly, taken in context, these words are not intended as an insult to followers of Muhammad, the Buddha, Laotzu, Enlightenment rationalism, or anybody or anything else. Rather, the “no one” here refers to Jesus’s own disciples, who have just been told that he is leaving them for a while and who want, in his absence, to trust some information—a plan, a diagram, a map, instructions, technique—so they can get to God or the kingdom of God on their own.31 But the reassurance once again falls on deaf ears; the “not-get-it factor” continues. Next, following in the clueless tradition of Peter and Thomas, Philip speaks up. Jesus has just mentioned coming to the Father, and so Philip interrupts:
Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.” (14:8–11)
To me, the dynamic core of this passage leaps out here in verse 9, not back in verse 6: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Here the irony becomes nearly unbearable (to me at least), as we contrast this statement with the conventional interpretation of verse 6. Jesus says in verse 9 that the invisible God has been made visible in his life. “If you want to know what God is like,” Jesus says, “look at me, my life, my way, my deeds, my character.” And what has that character been? One of exclusion, rejection, constriction, elitism, favoritism, and condemnation? Of course not! Jesus’s way has been compassion, healing, acceptance, forgiveness, inclusion, and love from beginning to end—whether with a visiting-by-night Pharisee, a Samaritan woman, a paralyzed man, a woman caught in adultery, or a man born blind.
But our conventional interpretation of verse 6 seems to say, “Forget all that. Forget everything you’ve seen in me, the way I’ve lived and treated people, the way I’ve accepted prostitutes and tax collectors, the way I’ve welcomed outsiders and rejects. Forget all that. Believe, instead, that God will reject everyone except people who share your doctrinal viewpoints about me, because I won’t let anyone get to the Father unless they get by me first by joining my new religion.” It makes me want to cry, or groan, or scream.32