How Could Jesus Be Both Divine and Human?

How can a person have a divine nature and a human nature at the same time in the way that we believe Jesus Christ did?

One of the great crises in evangelical Christianity today is a lack of understanding about the person of Christ. Almost every time I watch Christian television I hear one of the classical creeds of the Christian faith being denied blatantly, unknowingly, unwittingly. And of course, part of the reason is that it is so difficult for us to understand how one person can have two natures. You are asking me the question, 'How?' I don't know how; I know that Jesus is one person with two natures. How can that be? Long before there was a human nature there was a second person of the Trinity. Here the second person of the Trinity, very God of very God, God himself, was able to take upon himself a human nature. No human being could reverse the process and take upon himself a divine nature. I cannot add deity to my humanity. It's not as if Christ changed from deity into humanity. That's what I hear all the time. I hear that there was this great eternal God who suddenly stopped being God and became a man. That's not what the Bible teaches. The divine person took upon himself a human nature. We really can't understand the mystery of how this happened. But it is conceivable, certainly, that God, with his power, can add to himself a human nature and do it in such a way as to unite two natures in one person.

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Importance of Buddhist psychotherapy

Celebrated Psychologists like Carl Jung, William James and many others have understood the value of Buddhist philosophy and its positive impact on mental health. Their research programs have highlighted the importance of Buddhist psychotherapy in the treatment of depression, anxiety, factitious and addiction disorders, medically unexplained symptoms and various other psychological ailments. It is now increasingly used in psychotherapeutic practice in the western world.

Modern society has imposed many strains on human beings, and those in the psychological realm are perhaps among the most serious. As declared by the Buddha and emphasized by William James, the realities of the mind are more important than the realities of the body. Hence the significance of mental health and mental therapy as advocated in Buddhism has been recognised today by professionals.

Mindfulness

Historically, the Buddha was the first religious leader in the world to draw a distinction between physical and mental illness. According to the Buddha, it is hard to find a perfectly healthy person physically; it is harder still to find a person completely sound and healthy mentally.

Buddhist psychotherapy stresses the value of mindfulness and meditation. Instead of talking long hours about a mental problem with a psychotherapist until it virtually takes over one's consciousness, the Buddhist therapy tries to help the individual to awaken to his or her true nature, even if it means living outside of social convention. This is where Western and Buddhist psychotherapy differ.

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Meekness Is Not Weakness

Of all the Beatitudes, I'd guess that "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth" is the most misunderstood, mistrusted, and neglected. I think the reason why is because we don't understand the virtue of meekness and tend to think it indicates weakness.

Certainly, meekness didn't fit in with the values of the Greco-Roman world of the first century, where humility wasn't generally lauded as a virtue. Nietzsche, a great admirer of the Greeks, thought meekness was exactly the sort of false virtue that the weak would applaud because, well, it's about the only virtue they could actually pull off. Since the weak can't win by the standard rules, they change the rules.

I think most of us are far more Nietzschean than we'd like to admit. At least I am. When I hear the word meek, it seems too insipid, too accommodating, too spineless to be a virtue.

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If You Want to Evangelize, Try Talking About the Weather

When I was at seminary two decades ago, "spiritual direction" was a new trend. Many of us thought that it was the greatest idea we'd ever hit upon, particularly for those who had grown up around very

Spiritual direction, we learned, was like midwifery: A midwife cannot create life or control it. She can only encourage it to fruition and be present to the miracle that is already happening in someone else. In the same way, spiritual directors facilitate growth but aren't responsible for it. Both the director and director are in a listening posture, waiting on the Spirit for discernment and attending to the life that God is growing within.

This midwife-to-mother relationship was located, we thought, in the upper atmosphere of spiritual maturity and sought after by believers who were really striving to attain deep faith. We were all talking about it, reading books about it, and wondering where on earth to find a highly trained spiritual director.

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