Wednesday, August 23

What if...?


I regularly ask myself "what if..." questions. They range from routine things like "what if I get home and there's nothing in the freezer for dinner," to serious things like "what if something happens to one of my parents." I think about what I would do if one of those things happen. Some of it is just idle thinking, and some of it is a kind of advance planning. It's like your coach telling you in little league to think, before the pitch is even thrown, about what you are going to do if the ball is hit to you.

On Monday, I was thinking about some spiritual "what ifs." I finally got around to seeing The DaVinci Code. That got me to thinking about what if the story is right? What if Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and they had a child?

First off, let me make clear that I don't think that it's true. Also, it would significant leap of faith to believe that it's true. It's not something that can be proven. It would be extremely difficult to prove that the body in a tomb is actually Mary Magdalene. Also, after 2,000 years, the DNA in any bones in that tomb would be so degraded that finding a match would be difficult. And even if you got enough DNA for a sample to compare to someone who was alive today, the best you could do is to prove that the person is a descendant of Mary Magdalene, it wouldn't prove that they were a descendant Jesus. At some point, it would take a action of faith to reach the conclusion that the theory underlying The DaVinci Code was true.

Still, what if you could conclusively prove that Jesus and Mary were married? What if they had a kid? What impact would it have on my faith?

After putting some thought into it, I have to say that it would have no impact on my faith at all. I can't see how the fact that Jesus (who was fully human as well as fully God) might have been married and had a child has any affect on his message or on the way that he created for us to have a relationship with God. It wouldn't nullify anything in the scripture.

Obviously, there is nothing in the Bible that discusses Jesus being married, but then it says very little in general about the spouses of men in the New Testament. The apostle that the Bible specifically indicates was married was Peter. Even then, it doesn't say anything directly about Peter's wife, but does talk about him having a mother-in-law. Yet in a culture where arranged marriage was the rule, it is likely that most, if not all, of the apostles were married. And there isn't anything in the Bible that says that the Messiah couldn't be married.

If it were true that Jesus was married and had a child, it clearly would make us rethink things, and maybe would change some of our understandings about scripture, it shouldn't have an impact on our faith.

1 comment:

TheBGRT said...

I think questioning your faith is essential to your faith. If you take everything blindly, really don't have a faith, at least not one with substance.