The Realism of Jesus--A Rejected Stone

E. Stanley Jones was a missionary, a theologian, and a prolific writer. In his devotional book Victorious Living he shows how the Lord Jesus was (and is) real:

"Of all the strange anomalies in history the strangest is this: the Man who was the greatest realist in history has been turned into the greatest idealist. Jesus' realism was so astonishing, so different that men did not know what to do with it. They had to act on it or reject it. But they couldn't bring themselves to do either, so they found a way by which they would both hold Jesus and hold the old order of life--they made Him into an ideal. That ideal would be practiced some day--but not now. They thus satisfied their sense of being loyal to the high while practicing the low. Christ was crucified on the cross of being irrelevant--now.

"So we adopted Christianity as an idealism, lifted up high above life, inoperative except here and there in small things. Because we could hold high ideals we thought we were thereby spiritual. But 'all idealism is a concealed materialism,' for it makes a divorce between body and spirit, and refers religion to the spirit, while other ways of life control the material. Hence idealism becomes materialism, for the latter is acted on.

"Jesus was astonishingly realistic. So realistic that men thought it idealism. When He said we must love our neighbor as ourselves, that is not idealism--it is realism, for nothing else will work. Unless you give an equal and fair chance to everybody, you will have none for yourself. Selfishness is suicide, collective and individual.

"When Jesus said we must lose ourselves to find ourselves, that is not idealism, it is realism. It is obeying a fundamental law of life. Nothing else will finally work. The demand that religion be realistic is upon us. The world is perishing for the need of just this thing. So the realism of Jesus, rejected by the builders, is made the head of the corner."