A Man on a Mission

Chesterton conducted something of a personal experiment to see what the overall impression would be if a person simply read the Gospels without any previous information regarding Jesus. What he found surprised him:

It is full of sudden gestures evidently significant except that we hardly know what they signify; of enigmatic silences; of ironical replies. The outbreaks of wrath, like storms above our atmosphere, do not seem to break out exactly where we should expect them, but to follow some higher weather-chart of their own.

Oh, but they do make sense, when you understand that this is a man on a mission. That the same man who could be so playful is also a man on fire. If you would know Jesus, you must know that this — his fierce intentionality — is essential to his personality.

Nature bears witness. Picture an African lion, stalking through tall grass, closing in on its prey — the ruthless focus, the vigilant keenness. Or the gaze of a silverback gorilla when he turns to confront an intruder crossing the hidden boundary of his band. How about a mother brown bear when her cubs are threatened? Six hundred pounds of unrelenting fury. Now imagine you are watching one of these scenes not on the nature channel but from thirty feet away. Oh, yes, we find a very fierce intentionality in nature — reflecting the personality of the Artist.

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