Consider Jesus

When I was a freshman in college, the first semester actually ended about three weeks into January. We had exams and then were “out of class” for a day or two. During that brief period, student life sponsored a spiritual formation program at night and the college invited a guest lecturer to come in and speak in the mornings. 

The speaker my freshman year was a scientist named Dr. George Schweitzer, who worked at the Oak Ridge atomic facility and was a distant cousin of the great Albert Schweitzer. He was also a committed Christian. I didn’t have great science classes in the little country high school I attended – and even if I had it wouldn’t have made a difference because I really didn’t care a lot about learning in those days. But someone I was very interested in science – and Dr. Schweitzer intrigued me.

He said some things that I knew, even as a relatively dumb freshman, that weren’t the normal things I had heard Christians say. From the questions some of the older, more educated students were asking, I could tell that he didn’t always say the party line they expected him to say.

I can still remember his last session like it happened yesterday. He spent the last fifteen minutes or so allowing students to ask questions. The questions were creating a little tension in the room and I remember thinking some of those questions were pretty rude – in tone at least.

Finally Dr. Schweitzer said, “I need to leave for the airport, but I want to leave you with one important piece of advice.” He then said, “Stand firm on the Jesus event, hang lose otherwise.”

For me, that was one of those “light bulb moments” where I thought that you could be a Christian, have a brain, and be inquisitive. I grew up in a very Christian family – but we didn’t have a lot of rules about what that meant. I could go fishing on Sunday afternoon, or even to the movies. If necessary, you could mow the lawn, or if there was threatening weather, harvest corn, cotton, or soy beans on Sunday! The cows on the dairy farm were milked twice a day, Sundays included.

I grew up where it was acceptable for our church to participate in holy week services with all the other churches around and we even served real wine for communion. Sometimes it seems as though Vacation Bible School was schedule in consecutive weeks so all the kids could go to all the VVS programs. The same was often true of revivals.

But the student handbook I received my freshman year in college frowned on much of what I had grown up with. I felt a bit trapped in a world that I didn’t know existed.

Here comes Dr. Schweitzer. “Stand firm on the Jesus event, hang lose otherwise.” I had some options.

Nearly fifty years later, I’m still thankful that I heard him say that. It put into words how I think my godly parents raised me in the faith. 

Just a few days ago this story popped back on the front burner of my brain. I’m teaching an exegetical course on the Epistle to the Hebrews. At the beginning of chapter three, as the author writes to people who seem to be considering walking away from Jesus and back to their previous life, whoever wrote this incredible epistle says, “Consider Jesus.” (Hebrews 3:1) He goes on to describe Jesus as the apostle and high priest of our faith, he is superior to angels and Moses so far in Hebrews, and the answer to the challenge of walking away is simple: “Consider Jesus.”

I don’t do bumper stickers and I have never had to manage one of those church signs where you have to put up a new clever saying each week. But if I were to be responsible for a bumper sticker campaign or had to put up a saying on the church sign, I could do no better than to simply say “Consider Jesus.”

To all the racists who passed by that sign – what better advice could I give them than to say “Consider Jesus.” To the drug dealer going into an urban blighted neighbor to sell drugs, “Consider Jesus.” To a couple on the way to an abortion clinic because they simply can’t see another option, “Consider Jesus.” To a business man or woman not treating his or her employees justly, “Consider Jesus.” To a district attorney who operates in punishment mode, not justice, “Consider Jesus.”

To the guy I saw when I first looked into the mirror this morning, “Consider Jesus.”

Some might say, “how naively simplistic.” 

I’m going to reply, “The Jesus story is the power of God unto salvation.”