Trying to be like Jesus - in the flesh

I am currently almost finished reading John.

When I started this, I mentioned that I was in the Book of Mormon and I wanted to finish that before starting the Gospels again. Fortunately I found things to write about that way, and that has basically been continuing now.

After I finish John, my plan is to go through the entire Harmony of the Gospels.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/harmony?lang=eng

This is a study aid that attempts to put the events in a chronological order and gather all of the verses related to something together. I have been referring to it for the past few posts, but not methodically.

This will be interesting, because no matter how reasonable other study methods sound, reading straight through is the only thing that feels natural to me.

Other things that may help are that my family only has a few weeks left in the Old Testament for our study (after which I believe we will start the New Testament) and I will soon start reading Gesu il Cristo (James Talmadge's Jesus the Christ in Italian).

For now, while there are things that I know I want to write about, I did not want to get to them quite yet, and I was not sure what to write about today. That led me to the Harmony, and with Cana and the fasting and temptation having been covered, the early ministry makes sense, though there are only two versus on that, about teaching and baptizing. Kind of.

John 3:22 After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized.

John 4:1 When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John,

So far so good, but there is also John 4:2 -

(Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples,)

What I have heard explained about the parenthetical phrases is that they were insertions into the text that probably took some literary license. For example, in John 5:4, yes, the pool may have times when the water moves, and its healing properties may be greater at those times, but it is unlikely that it is an angel going down and setting off a contest where the first one in gets healed.

That made me think of two things, both of which I wanted to write, and thus we have all this prelude, which I hope at least provides some clarification.

Firstly, I read the King James Version translation. It is an LDS copy with LDS study guides (all of which can be found online which can make linking great), but that's traditional with my church. Even if there are better translations now, that's still what I do.

I have been thinking about that now partly because of reading a minor reference in something else about how you wouldn't expect the king's translators to put in something supporting rebelling against kings.

(It might have been an excerpt from Saul Alinsky's  Rules for Radicals, in which case I will be reading that soon so I will find out.)

The other thing goes along with being able to have a life, as I wrote about regarding Cana. I think the reason you would add that is because it feels like too much to have been baptized by Jesus, because he's Jesus!. Or maybe it's too undignified to imagine him getting all wet, or maybe he should be holding back and let his disciples do all the work because he is the leader.

I can see how those mindsets would form, but there are too many other hints that it wasn't that way. Jesus stoops and draws in the dirt. He eats with publicans. He eats and drinks, period. He washes feet and girds himself appropriately to do so.

Bodily functions can be gross (especially in mortality), but being overly critical of flesh harms. That creates people who feel guilty for enjoying sex and food and warmth and all of those things that are pleasurable and intended to be so. Periods of fasting have value, but part of the value is surely the contrast.

When we despise those things, and divorce them from God, we distance ourselves from Him. This goes beyond Jesus to getting the idea of a God without parts and passions, everywhere and nowhere. How can we possibly relate to such a being? He is superior, but we are created in his image; there are parts of him in us and us in him.

So much of scripture is asking us to know God, that we should not work to make him unknowable.