The Downward Path to Our Highest Aspiration

Unless you’ve just been rescued from a remote desert isle, you heard the uproar over the President posting an A.I. picture of himself as Jesus, healing a man and receiving adulation from all around. Even his loyal supporters objected, and many said it was blasphemy. I agree.

I won’t add to the voluminous commentary about the President or his post. But I would like to reflect on an underlying assumption that many who responded seem to have, namely that no one can be like Jesus. That’s right in one way: there is only one Jesus. But Jesus called his disciples to come be with him day in and out, so that they could become more like him, and begin doing the sorts of things he did.

This is a much higher ambition than most people hold for themselves, even Christians. Most of us simply hope that we could be basically good, with a few more virtue assets than vice deficits. And we leave the “saint” business to the exceptional few. If that’s you, and you’re a believer in Jesus, then you are shooting low. Because here’s the Lord’s ambition for you: as one who bears the life of Jesus, you are to become more and more like him, and to do more and more of what he did – that is, to be increasingly “Christ-like.”

Jesus repeatedly showed his life ambition for his disciples, right up to the night before his crucifixion. Having washed his disciples’ feet, he said: “If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. (John 13:14-16)

Human default mode, apart from God’s grace given in Jesus, is self-aggrandizing, ever seeking to make the world about ourselves, and to be on top. Across the centuries we have contrived many tools to aid us in our dizzying climb, A.I. now being our newest booster.

Such upward pretensions move in the exact opposite direction of Jesus, who put himself on a downward trajectory. We who follow him have been called to walk in his ways of sacrificial love.

There is but one Jesus, and no one must seek to claim his place. But we who have been enlivened by his grace and goodness must take up life patterns that enable us more truly to become like him. That is the path to true human fulfillment – and greatness. And far from seeking to rival the glory that is due to Jesus, such life patterns shout praise for him. May it be so more and more for us all.