Why was Jesus a carpenter?    

Why did Jesus choose carpentry as his profession and what it has got to do with the motion of time and space?

Lim

Dear Lim,

Jesus did not choose carpentry as a profession. His father, Joseph, was a carpenter by trade, and like all other Semites of the time, he communicated and trained his son in the skill and profession he knew. Jesus is true God and true man, and as a true man, he grew up in the same conditions of physical, natural, social, economic, and cultural limitation as any other human. Jesus became incarnate, which meant he was in a concrete place, at a concrete time, with concrete parents, and in a very concrete culture -- and it just so happened that his human father was a carpenter.

Your question indicates that you have anticipated the problem of reconciling Jesus' eternal nature as God with his human nature. Perhaps the easiest way of understanding this is to think of the three persons of the Trinity as three distinct acts of self-consciousness sharing one infinite nature (i.e., one infinite power source of thought and action). Now imagine that the second person (Jesus' self-consciousness) entered into his own thought of our universe (in a previous question I talked about the universe being a thought in the divine mind). When Jesus entered into his own thought of the physical universe, it might be like you entering into your dream world at night. You think you are living in your dream, and are absolutely convinced that you are subject to the laws of that dream. Sometimes you can fly; sometimes you can fall and not be hurt; sometimes you even have super powers. We've all experienced this. 

When Jesus entered into his thought of the physical universe, he became subject to the laws of that universe, but he was still using the one, infinite power source of God. This is like your self-consciousness existing in your real, physical body when it enters into your dream world. You find yourself living in two different worlds (the physical universe and the dream world). Christ's self-consciousness also remains in the one, infinite power source, even while he enters into his thought of the physical world.

What does that mean with respect to time?

When the son's self-consciousness is in the infinite power source, it isn't subject to time. In the physical universe it is, just like any other human being.  

I hope this helps.

Fr. Spitzer

Dear Fr. Spitzer,

Was Jesus fully immersed in our universe like we are in our dreams? If so, was he born knowing he was Christ or did he have to figure it out?

Barb

Dear Barb, 

When Jesus' self-consciousness is immersed in his divine nature (the one, infinite power source), he knows his human nature (his self-consciousness in the physical universe) perfectly. However, when his self-consciousness was in his human nature, he could not possibly understand his divine nature perfectly, because human beings (subject to the laws of the physical universe) do not have that power or capacity.

Therefore, God the Father (and as Jesus himself says, the Holy Spirit) had to reveal this to him -- and this revelation had to occur in a way that a real human being could understand. How did it happen? To be honest, I have no idea, because it seems to me that God had many ways to accomplish this, and I cannot yet read God's mind.

Nevertheless, we know that God the Father (and the Holy Spirit) revealed this to him at some point. In his ministry, Jesus is aware of his exclusive, divine nature as the son, and he manifests this to his disciples in both word and action. For example, Jesus raises the dead (a power belonging to God alone) not by appealing to Yahweh (as Elijah and Elisha did), but in his own name ("I say to you"). Furthermore, Jesus claims to defeat evil in his own name (also reserved to Yahweh alone).

Now the fact that Jesus actually succeeded at raising the dead and casting out demons in his own name shows irrefutably that he not only believed that he had divine power, but in point of fact, he did. If he didn't, his words to the dead people and to the demonically possessed would have done nothing.  

So how can we be sure that these things happened as the New Testament reports them? You can find an extensive summary of the historical work done by John P. Meier on the subject in the Magis Institute Online Encyclopedia. With respect to words, Jesus claims to be the exclusive son of the father in many passages. These are also explored in our encyclopedia. 

Did Jesus know he was the exclusive son of the Father as a child? St. Luke certainly believed that he had some knowledge of this, and we must believe that God revealed this to Jesus in a way that was appropriate to a child, even when he was four or five. Just as any child can have genuinely religious experiences, it seems very likely that Jesus had an extraordinary set of religious experiences (appropriate to a child) that revealed his divine son-ship to him.

As I said earlier, we simply cannot know how this occurred, but by the time of his ministry, it seems that he was well aware of it.  

I hope this helps.

Fr. Spitzer