The note below is from the New York Times, from an opinion blog posted there. A fellow priest noticed this article and posted it on his Facebook page. Father Orthoduck found the question asked in the blog to be quite insightful as well and thought he would pass it on. Father Orthoduck encourages you to go to his blog and post answers to his question. Some of the comments are insightful, way too many are the type of unthinking spam that one sees on too many of today’s public blogs.
October 30, 2009, 2:23 pm
The Greatest Question Ever Asked?
By Stephen J. Dubner
We’ve been doing a lot of media interviews for SuperFreakonomics, and once in a while you get asked a really interesting question.
But I don’t think this one will ever be topped. It comes from a journalist in India:
You state that your book is based on one fundamental assumption about human nature: people respond to incentives. Which is another way of saying that people are basically selfish. Take someone like Jesus Christ. What was his “incentive” to go on the cross?
This question made me think in about 10 directions at once. It also made me want to grab a New Testament and read it in an entirely new way. For starters, here’s an interesting blog post titled “The Economics of Jesus” which begins with this excellent line: “Jesus probably didn’t know much about macroeconomics, even though he was God.”
By the way, I haven’t yet answered this journalist’s question — it’s an e-mail Q&A interview — so I’m eager for your input.
We aren’t Jesus.
We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.
We need Jesus.
I find it hard to argue with Heb 12:2
For those of you who do not have perfect recall of Scripture:
Hebrews 12:2 – . . . looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.