What Was Jesus's Personality Like?

[soccer girl =D]

If it's Jesus you're talking about I bet he had a good one!

[Tinkerlina]

I enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts on this. The more I think about it, the easier it is to see that Jesus must have had a great sense of humor and fun. If you look at the people closest to Jesus that you know personally, I bet you'll think of people who are joyful. And part of joy is laughing and having fun. Obviously, a sense of Joy in God is a deeper and more profound joy, but I definitely think Jesus laughed at the lighter moments in life and I bet he enjoys laughing at some of the goofy things us humans do. Plus, we know from the Bible that Jesus loved children, and I think when most of us think of a child we know, solemnity and reservation aren't the first things that come to mind!

[jeffpugh]

[quote name='hot stuff' post='1446073' date='Jan 15 2008, 01:05 PM']or my dating life?[/quote]
Forget going to the zoo to see God's sense of humour because "hot stuff" sums up it all.

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' post='1446129' date='Jan 15 2008, 03:11 PM']In a recent private conversation I was putting forth the view that the Gospels show that Christ was a master of sarcasm (mostly in dealings with the Pharisees). A lot of it is pretty idiomatic so some of the brilliance and bite is lost in English translation.[/quote]
No doubt.

[cathoholic_anonymous]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' post='1445884' date='Jan 15 2008, 05:03 AM']Hey everyone,
I was thinking about this today. What was Christ like, as a person. Of course he was infinitely loving, compassionate, and merciful, but I'm talking about more 'human' traits (and this is all completely speculative, of course, and not intended to be blasphemous or anything of the sort).[/quote]

Those are 'human' traits. They're about as human as you can possibly get.

[quote]Do you think Our Lord would have been able to appriciate a joke? I'd like to think that my Saviour could come up with a few one liners, because I'm the jovial type, but I never have heard of him in a lighthearted manner.
What do you think?[/quote]

Here are three examples of Jesus making jokes taken from the Gospels themselves:

Mary: "They have no wine."
Jesus: "Woman, what is this to do with me? My hour has not yet come."

Whenever Jesus speaks of 'my hour' he is referring to his crucifixion. The wine at Cana has symbolism for this reason - it is connected to the Last Supper and prefigures what happened at Calvary. Jesus' riposte to Mary shows that he must have had a comic streak that even manifested as black humour at times.

When Nicodemus came to see Jesus in the middle of the night, Jesus ended his conversation with a telling remark about light and darkness - which must have come just as he was showing Nicodemus out of the lighted room and into the dark street. A wry twist there.

The same dry humour manifests itself when he meets Nathaniel, who exclaims adoringly, "You are the Messiah!" when he realises that Jesus knows his name and what he has just been doing. Jesus replies with what must have been sardonic exasperation, "Do you believe it just because I said I saw you sitting under the fig tree?"

(These are all paraphrases, as I don't have a copy of the Bible with me at the moment, but they're accurate in sense if not in RSV-word.)

My priest once made an interesting comment about Jesus as a storyteller and preacher. He loved stories - this much is evident from the kind of language he used and the fact that he chose to teach in parables. Father said, "I want to know what he did with his hands - the body language he used as he got into the telling of the story!" This made me think of Jesus standing by the Sea of Galilee, holding five thousand people in thrall as he preached. No dusty sermon could have pulled that kind of crowd.

G.K. Chesterton had something wonderful to say about Jesus' personality:

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed his tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
- from [i]Orthodoxy[/i]

[jeffpugh]

Great post, CA. When I started reading that excerpt from Chesterton I immediately knew it was from Orthodoxy. The ending of that book was amazing. It just draws you in more and more as the paragraph comes to a close. And the ending comes as a joyful surprise. No wonder he became Catholic

[Catholictothecore]

[quote name='dUSt' post='1446120' date='Jan 15 2008, 02:59 PM']The Packers weren't established until 1921.[/quote]

Perhaps not, but I'm certain he always knew of the superiority of the Boston Red Sox.