Did Jesus say, "I am the way"?

After using a series of metaphors to describe himself as “the bread of life,” a “door” or a “gate,” and “the Good Shepherd,” Jesus, a devout Jew, said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”

“Is Jesus the only way?” That’s this month’s question in a series of columns Rev. Bob Norris and I are offering to explain differences between liberal and conservative Christians.

A foundational difference between most conservatives and most liberals is the role of Biblical scholarship. Liberals value research that begins with the text and looks beyond it into the history, linguistics, and culture of the people who wrote the Bible and the language in which it was written.

Conservatives often reject Biblical scholarship because it frequently challenges a strict interpretation of scripture, the anchor of their beliefs. Liberals rejoice in Biblical scholarship believing it’s the key to unlocking the meaning.

Trying to understand scripture without looking beyond it is like trying to see a scenic meadow through a wall instead of a window. Looking through that window has not always been welcomed. Scholarship didn’t become a part of Bible studies until the mid 19^th century. Before then archeology was designed only to back strict interpretation of the Bible. After Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species,” Biblical scholars were persecuted. Some lost their preaching or teaching jobs. Others suffered church trials.

After World War II Biblical scholarship was resuscitated. Seminaries chose sides. Some retained fundamentalist teachings. Others were open to where science, anthropology, archeology, linguistics, and other disciplines led.

The most influential development was the Jesus Seminar, a group of 150 esteemed scholars and laypersons. Having arrived at this work with years of study, the Jesus Seminar spent additional years looking at the Gospels. They aimed to discern when and where each was written, by whom and to what purpose, studying the influences at work and the messages each word intended to convey.

A profound part of this endeavor led scholars to distinguish “Jesus” from “Christ.” There’s a discernible difference between what Jesus said before the crucifixion and the words attributed to him afterward when he became “the Christ.”

The Jesus Seminar produced what is called the Scholars’ Version of the Gospels. They color-coded the words of Jesus. Words in red indicate that, in the opinion of the scholars, these words are unequivocally the words of Jesus.

Words believed, “with some reservation,” to be those of Jesus are printed in pink. Gray signifies words that probably weren’t spoken by Jesus but are useful in determining who Jesus was.

Black lettering means the scholars concluded “Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition.”

The Jesus Seminar published "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me” in black letters. Most scholars believe these words reflect “early Christian circles.” During the early days of the church, Jesus followers were separating theologically from the Jewish community of which many were a part. The “I am” sayings are employed to explain why they chose to follow Jesus.

Though the words are attributed to the Jewish rabbi, conservative Christians argue, “I am the way,” means Christianity is the gatekeeper to God. Liberal Christians reject this exclusionary view. There is one God but there are many paths leading to that God. Christianity is not the only way. Jesus’ way, however, is, though it’s a way expressed as much in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran, Upanishads, or Bhagavad Gita as in the Gospels.

For example, Matthew’s Jesus speaks. “Do unto others what you want them to do to you.” The way of Jesus is expressed similarly in Islam where Muhammad taught, “That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind,” and among Hindus, “One should never do to another which one regards as injurious to one’s self.”

In other words, you can follow the way of Jesus without being a Christian.

Medicaid expansion, tobacco, and seatbelts

It is possible to significantly reduce state budgets without slashing programs for the poor and elderly. What if the legislature crafted an effective public health policy? Avoidable health problems are costly. Good public policy reduces the impacts on lives and budgets.

The costs of preventable health problems trickle down. Health insurance premiums rise. Taxpayers pay for those who choose not to buy insurance or have incomes so low they cannot afford coverage.

The legislature’s piecemeal approach to health policy is not based on data and science but a senseless brand of libertarianism and partisan politics permitting people to endanger themselves, their children, and others.

The Wyoming Department of Health employs the best and brightest minds working on health issues. They study data and know the science. Within their area of expertise each could inform legislators on healthcare solutions.

These experts are rarely asked. Legislators without expertise in health matters draft bills and debate them, playing fast and loose with the facts. Most lawmakers are less interested in accurate data and science than in playing politics with the lives of their constituents.

The Labor, Health and Social Services Committee is again “studying” healthcare. Rep. Elaine Harvey, Committee co-chair, said the study wouldn’t include expanding Medicaid to cover 20,000 uninsured Wyoming people.

I repeat. Most legislators are less interested in accurate data and science than in playing politics with the lives of their constituents. If they were interested in real solutions, they’d address the uninsured, seatbelt laws and tobacco use.

Making sure people have health insurance is the cornerstone to health planning. The Institute of Medicine says, “Evidence from the scientific literature overwhelmingly shows that those without health insurance, children as well as adults, suffer worse health and die sooner than those who have coverage.” Uninsured adults suffer a 25% higher mortality rate than the insured. The misery falls on the sick but those costs fall on the taxpayers.

Certain diseases compound the risk. Uninsured cancer patients die within five years twice as often as the insured, much of which is tobacco-related. Despite consistent science showing the enormous amount of suffering and costs attributed to tobacco use, legislators appear more obligated to tobacco growers than to their constituents.

Tobacco is a high-cost killer.  The American Cancer Society says a quarter of a billion Wyoming taxpayer dollars are spent annually on tobacco-caused illnesses. Legislators claiming concern about Medicaid costs ignore tobacco costs Wyoming’s Medicaid budget $45 million a year.

Can legislators do something to reduce tobacco-related costs? Yes, if they heed science rather than tobacco lobbyists and increase the legal age to buy cigarettes, ban smoking in public facilities, and raise tobacco taxes.

Wyoming taxes tobacco at a lower rate than all but 10 other states. If we doubled the 60-cent tax we’d get into the middle of the pack. ACS projects a $1.25 per pack tax generates 23.26 million in annual revenues.

More important is the impact on smokers. Forty-five hundred adults would quit, priced out of smoking. Approximately forty-seven hundred kids wouldn’t start smoking if cigarettes cost more.

Choices? Science or lobbyists? Life or death?

Serious efforts to lower healthcare costs demand an effective seatbelt law. Wyoming has a limp secondary law. You can’t be cited for failure to buckle-up unless stopped for another offense. As a result, Wyoming has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the U.S. In 2012, more than half of those killed on state highways weren’t buckled up.

A 2014 Transportation Research Institute study found fatalities rise radically when states choose secondary seatbelt enforcement. That’s the science. But legislators listen most to the foolish suggestion that requiring seatbelts is government interference with freedom, however much their lives or the lives of their children may be shortened as a result.

When legislators feign concern about high costs of healthcare, ask what they’re doing to lower costs. Are they making certain people are insured, reducing use of tobacco, and buckling up?

We reap what we sow. Improving people’s health reaps a huge harvest.

“Flashcuts Out of Chaos.” Great name for a poetry collection. You’ll enjoy the read. One award-winning poet called it “the most humane and winning collection” of poetry. It’s a collection of Charlie Brice’s writing. Charlie is one of thousands of bright Wyoming kids who grew up here but left, never to return. “Flashcuts” is a reminder of the high costs of their exodus. 

Never been much for poetry. High school experiences with poetry weren’t all that inspiring. I suspect that was more my fault than any teacher’s. Pretty much left poetry behind by graduation day.

Half a century passed and an old high school friend changed that.

“Those cottonwoods were thrilling.

They danced like ballerinas

and sometimes went mad

throwing their white blazon

all over the city like furry confetti.”

Charlie Brice graduated from St. Mary’s High School in 1968. His days in the parochial school find their way into his poetry many decades subsequent as attested by his poem, “Daydream.”

“He daydreams,’ my mother

read aloud Sister Susanna’s

terse and torrid critique.

‘What’s a daydream?’ I asked.

‘It’s when you look out the window

and stop listening in class,’ my mother said.”

Charlie experienced daydreams about things like world peace. It wasn’t about religion. It was more profound. “Daydream” revealed healthy skepticism about religion. “Someone picked up the end of a river and found frogs reciting the Baltimore Catechism.”

Charlie earned conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War when local draft boards demanded that applicants demonstrate a genuinely moral conviction against all war. He did.

Charlie studied philosophy at the University of Wyoming, graduating from Denver University in 1974, the year he married Judy. In 1998, Charlie was awarded a Ph.D. in psychology from Duquesne University. He and Judy remain in Pittsburgh. Charlie was a psychoanalyst, retiring a decade ago when he unleashed the poet.

The poet writes, “Stop daydreaming,’ my mother said.” Fortunately Charlie didn’t.

“But the music I heard/saw out that window:

The Nutcracker Suite-Elephants skittered like leaves

across the sky, Jesus jumped

from his cross and chased Lazarus to Life.”

Over the years, Charlie’s poetry was read in countless national publications such as the Atlantic Review. He earned prestigious honors including the International Merit Award in Atlantic Review’s 2015 International Poetry Competition and the 2013 Allen Ginsburg Poetry Contest.

Often his work recounts those youthful Wyoming days. Charlie wrote a story he titled “Coward.” (http://www.literal-latte.com/2014/04/coward/). It was about his decision to seek conscientious objector (CO) status while living in Cheyenne. He persuaded the draft board of the honesty of his convictions and served in the psychiatric ward of a Denver hospital. It was a courageous choice but not particularly welcomed here. Charlie’s best friend’s father told him, “C and O were the first two letters in the word coward.”

“Coward” tells of the day a patient asked, “You scared to fight?

“No,’ I said, ‘I just don’t believe I or anyone has the right to take another person’s life.’ Becoming a pacifist had been a long and arduous road. I’d studied the thought of Buddha, Spinoza, Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, but it was Yevtushenko’s poem, ‘People,’ that convinced me that killing a person meant killing a world, a universe of relationships, a lifetime collection of love, hate, joy, disappointment, defeat, and triumph. Who had the right to do that?”

Wyoming might hold onto more of its young if it honored people who aren’t afraid to fight but didn’t after reading Tolstoy, Spinoza, Gandhi and linking the killing of one person to the destruction of “a lifetime collection of love, hate, joy, disappointment, defeat, and triumph.”

Thank God for Facebook. It’s where those staying in Wyoming connect with friends who didn’t. Many of us who remained made good lives here. I have no regrets. Yet I can’t help but wonder about Wyoming. What could we be today if Wyoming had been more open to folks like Charlie Brice.

It wasn’t. It isn’t. Its loss.

“Stop daydreaming,’ my mother said.” Wyoming did.

Give Federal Lands Back

Some Wyoming legislators are again asking Congress to give federal lands to the states. The proposal has one major flaw. It’s the inconvenient fact that the federal government doesn’t hold clear title.

Of two-and-a-quarter billion acres of land in our country, federal stakes amount to 28 percent or 640 billion acres. Thirty million acres lie within Wyoming’s borders. That’s 48 percent of the Cowboy State, making it almost as much Washington’s country as God’s country.
The word “Wyoming” is a Delaware Indian word meaning alternating valleys and mountains. Those alternating valleys and mountains belong to several Native American tribes known as Plains Indians. The historic owners included the Arapaho, Shoshone, Arikara, Bannock, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Nez Perce, Sheep Eater, Sioux, and Ute tribes.
This land is not your land. This land is not my land. This land is their land. If ownership is relinquished to anyone, it should be returned to Native Americans, not the states, the Bundys, or other so-called Sagebrush rebels.
Native American claims have better legal standing than claims made in political circles by ranchers, farmers, miners, or loggers. They have no better claim to this land than someone who received your car from the thief that stole it from you. Receiving stolen property is a crime in most states.
All of Wyoming and most of the land within the United States was stolen. Our forefathers were not above employing brutally immoral means to take it from Native American tribes. And this is not ancient history. The theft was completed during a generation in which my great-grandfather lived.
As white people moved west, the U.S. government made a decision. White lives mattered. Red lives didn’t. The settlers and the government that stole the land they wanted were people of European heritage whose holy book taught how a homeland is central to one’s faith.
They slaughtered vast herds of bison upon which Native American lifestyle and culture depended. The U.S. military used systematic violence and genocidal strategies. They negotiated treaties and violated them without regret. In the process, our government did what it could to eradicate Native Americans and, in the end, settled on herding them onto reservations, land which was inadequate to sustain the vitality of any culture.
Taking the land of a land-based culture birthed the inevitable.

The result some 150 or more years later is the hopelessness Wyoming Senator John Barrasso encounters on reservation after reservation. As chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. Barrasso held hearings on Native American youth suicide. He said, “Native youth suicide isn’t a new issue,” asking Robert McSwain, Indian Health Service Director, “When are we going to see results?”

Swain said reservation children suffer from chronic poverty and a sense of hopelessness. “Our children believe they are destined to suffer the same history and injustices our ancestors suffered,” Swain said.

White people destroyed their culture. Instead of blaming victims, the heirs of the destroyers should right the wrong.

In her book “Ceremony” Leslie Silko says, “The (Native) people had been taught to despise themselves because they were left with barren land and dry rivers. But they were wrong. It was white people who had nothing, who were suffering as thieves.”

There’s a deeply adverse spiritual impact knowing that even the land on which we preach the Gospel is stolen. Wealth and sustainable cultures arise from the land. Restore their land and you’ll restore their culture.

Some will reject this because, they will assert, they had nothing to do with what happened in the last half of the 1800s. But we are beneficiaries of America’s two greatest sins, slavery and the destruction of the Native Americans. This is their land. They have the inherent skills and motivation to make certain these assets provide the means of resurrecting their great peoples, America’s First Nations.

The Christian nation some say we are must atone. The land stolen from Native Americans, which is now under federal ownership should be returned to the land’s rightful owners.