It should be of some significance to Christians that God’s message was not in “a raging whirlwind or a devouring fire” (Phillip Yancey quoted by Peter Wehner, NY Times 24/12/16). His messenger on earth was an ordinary man who was born in difficult circumstances, even with a hint of scandal, in a manger, after his family could not be accommodated in the inn. He spent a part of his childhood as a refugee, as so many thousands of children and adults are forced to do today, grew up into a worker, a carpenter, and died in his 30s at a time when the lifespan could not have been much higher. Some who do not subscribe to the view that he was the son of God, described him as an itinerant preacher, undistinguished from many others at that time, whose story took on greater proportions after he died.

But Jesus was different. He did not merely preach. He led by example. He was a friend of the poor and felt that they had a greater advantage in being admitted to heaven that the rich. “Blessed are you the poor for yours is the Kingdom of God,” he said. Jesus told the rich man who wanted to inherit eternal life to “go sell all your possessions and give your money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven.” Most of his followers, including women, who were accorded an equal status as men despite the patriarchal society which they inhabited, were ordinary people. Many of the men, including Peter, were fishermen. There is no evidence that Mary, who witnessed Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection, was anything more than of ordinary status. Her allegedly, prior, sinful character seems to have been a later invention.

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