Further to the previous post’s musings on living in the age of memoir —
In the midst of this week’s celebration of the passion and resurrection of Christ — what the Christian faith knows as its Holy Week — it’s worth noting that what we most clearly know about God also comes via biography. It came in the lived life of Jesus, but we know that life because it was written down. The Gospels carry the voices, research, concerns, and passion of their authors. They tell a life using the thematic approach of memoir.
So we listen to and read and use the Gospels as the life-writing they are, not to make the texts themselves the focus of our veneration, but to enter into and explore in order to know a person.
Life-writing, though, it’s important to remember. Not public relations, as Philip Yancey notes in The Jesus I Never Knew, quoting Scott Peck: “I was absolutely thunderstruck by the extraordinary reality of the man I found in the Gospels…”
Reality. For the age of memoir.
A blessed Easter!
photo by C. Dueck
Borrowing Bones 
Just imagine if Jesus would have written a memoir! The gospel stories are so important to my Christian faith, but how much difference would it make to have them with Jesus as author–and from his point of view? Would it settle arguments about doctrine and theology or just increase them?
Interesting, Shirley, to think about the dynamics of POV in this context. As I mulled on it, I couldn’t help thinking of the trust and confidence involved in leaving one’s story and representation in the hands of others…
For me, having the unique perspective of four different authors telling Jesus’ life-story gives a fuller understanding of who he is.
Thanks for taking the time to script these blogs, Dora. And, I like the photo that goes along with this one :o)