The suffering spiritual life of Jesus – Mat. 4

Whilst reading through Mat 4, I was lead down an interesting train of thought and I was hoping you could in some way guide me.

I recently read a book written by a Catholic Scholar (I think he is) named Albert Nolan, titled “Jesus Today.” I highly recommend you get yourself a copy of this book. He challenged my understanding of Jesus in so many positive ways. It’s an encouraging read.

Anyway, whilst reading through his comments on Mat 4, he suggested that perhaps we’re not meant to read this passage in a literal sense. Perhaps Jesus did not go into a physical desert as so many believers and non-believers are lead to believe. Perhaps, Jesus rather entered a period, like many of us believers do, where he felt distant from God. A place where he felt as if his prayers were getting him no where.

This thought fascinated me… it allowed me to take on a fresh new perspective of this piece of writing. It excited me because I could finally relate myself to this piece of writing… finally it meant something to me.

It lead me to the question, “How did Mathew know about this journey that Jesus did and the things he said and did?” Perhaps he was with Mathew and he shared his frustrations with him? I don’t know…

This does not however rule out the question as to when Jesus would have shared these details. Did Jesus go into the desert and upon his return he shared his story or did he talk about his suffering spiritual life throughout the 40 days where he just couldn’t connect with God?

Which leads me to another question, could Jesus’ spiritual life actually take a knock? This lead me to ponder over Jesus’ well known words from the cross: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” (Mat 27:46)... are you following my train of thought?

If God was silent, then perhaps Jesus is teaching us to handle the dry patch, the darkness of, the hole in our spiritual journeys…

Could it be that we’re focusing too much on the physical life of Jesus and in so doing be missing the very beauty of the spiritual life our Saviour?

The thing is that reading it from a metaphorical perspective allowed me to give a whole new meaning to the temptations of Jesus (Despite this, I in no way want to replace the true meaning from these temptations, hence my writing of this blog). These temptations suddenly became more real to me.

For example, v8 shares how satan took Jesus to the highest mountain and attempted to get Jesus to bow to him by showing him all the kingdoms of the world. Literally speaking, this has little, if any meaning to me personally. However, after thinking about it from a metaphorical perspective, I began to sense the beauty in Jesus resistance to this temptation. I began to understand the verse as if satan were offering me a CEO position of some well know company where I would believe that I am in fact the ruler of the world. You following me?

My question, after sharing this with you is: “Where do I draw the line in terms of taking the story of Jesus literally and metaphorically?”

Hope you can assist me in some way or another!!!

Thanks for the help…