Pros and Cons of Kairos' Forum on The Real Jesus Christ of History

Here is a list of pros and cons after attending yesterday's night seminar at Dream Center, DUMC.

Pros

  • attendees are given the awareness on the study of historical Jesus
  • attendees are given the awareness that media companies are producing documentaries on historical Jesus
  • attendees are alerted on the influence of media and their preferred positions in their popular presentations of the real Jesus Christ
  • the panel is willing to receive corrections from the floor
  • attendance and participation from open-minded Muslims
Cons
  • attendees are not given an ample introduction on the study of historical Jesus
  • as a result, many in the audience lose concentration and their understanding on the whole issue may be questionable
  • inaccurate information on the three quests of historical Jesus
  • as a result, the third quest which actually grounds Jesus in the Jewish context is associated with Jesus Seminar or scholars who are more inclined towards the gnostic gospels 
  • ineffective use of technology hampers the visual presentation of loaded information, making it difficult for the audience to stay concentrated and follow the oral/aural presentation 
  • over generalization of documentaries into a single category i.e. they are positioned to favour the gnostic gospels and multiple flavours of early christianities
  • attendees are not given the real image of who the historical Jesus is
  • attendees are simply reaffirmed to accept the Jesus of faith as presented in the canonical gospels
  • they are not given a solid picture of the historical Jesus as presented in the canonical gospels
  • they are not informed of the reasons why the Jesus of the canonical gospels is considered historically accurate
  • in the end, there is a feeling of contentment (false assumed in my opinion) in the air that our Jesus of faith is true historically and all the media presentations of our Lord are mere fabrications
As one of the panelists said, this may be a very subjective interpretation of the event yesterday, but I think I have given an accurate 'eyewitness' account of what transpired. It is good foresight that Kairos has arranged for a follow-up seminar on the same topic and I hope many of attendees will register to participate for better understanding of the whole matter. I just hope that this will not cause more believers to disengage from the challenges from the media and deem all documentaries as mere fabrications without solid reasons. 

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