Wednesday, January 6, 2010

a cynical look at john chapter 11

in studying john 11 for a bible study there were a couple of questions asked that brought out my cynical side. ok, it's always out, but it was provoked.
one was about which of the sisters martha and mary and which one was more responsive to Jesus. i'm pretty sure the answer according to the 'experts' is going to be martha. but i'm going with mary because she chilled at the house until Jesus called for her, then she went to Him and talked with Him, while martha had been on webmd looking for a cure for lazarus all the time Jesus was waiting to come and it's pretty obvious she was a bit ticked at Our Savior for taking so long, making me wonder if He needed malpractice insurance or something. so our american way is to go with the aggressive out front ask the questions regardless of the fact that you know what Jesus is going to say and things are going to work out ok in the end because after all it's Jesus after all and you trust Him and everything but you just have these couple of questions you really need to get answers to so that you can understand even though you understanding really adds nothing to the situation other than making you look like an impatient wench and then you argue with Him when he wants the tomb opened because you're afraid it's going to stink and you'll be embarrassed because nobody in this family has ever been stinky in public if martha had anything to do with it. ok, enough on martha.
next, the whole lazarus thing had to happen back then because now old martha would have had him bundled up and taken him to an urgent care or er where they would have done $5000 worth of tests on him to diagnose and then treat his problem and he would have never died and the book of john would have been one chapter short. and the shortest verse in the bible wouldn't be there. john 11:35 'Jesus wept'.