Jesus wants you to travel
“Is there a more compressed and charming religious exhortation than the one in the Gospel of Thomas in which Jesus merrily recommends to his disciples, “Be passersby”? Too much fussing about place and home and ritual, and even about where, exactly, you’re going to live, is unnecessary: be wanderers, dharma bums.”
–Adam Gopnik, “What Did Jesus Do?” New Yorker, May 24, 2010
November 14th, 2011 at 8:15 am
Even in the canonical gospels you get Jesus calling, saying “Follow Me” and talking about not having a bed to lay his head… Much of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures is about wandering: Abraham, the Exodus, the Exile, Jonah, Jesus and the disciples, Paul… Vanabonding seems like a pretty normal thing in “the Book”
November 14th, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Jesus called on certain persons to leave home and family and follow him, but does not offer this as a general prescription for secular life. It was not an endorsement of wandering in general, but of detaching oneself from home and family for a fairly specific holy purpose: the fulfillment of the Eleventh Commandment: to make disciples of all the world.
The closest realization of this that comes to mind in Christian tradition are the wandering holy men, the staretzi of old Russia, of whom Rasputin was one of the last.
If one either wanders or stays home with pious intent, I suspect the Lord will approve, but I do not think he had in mind traveling to acquire bragging rights or impress chicks or even to live a more interesting and fulfilling secular life.
November 16th, 2011 at 3:16 am
I strongly recommend Jack Kerouac’s book “Dharma Bums”. It is a fantastic read; much better than “On
The Road” in my opinion.
December 18th, 2011 at 5:11 am
my name is ravibabu church pastor from india.please pray for me.we are poor people.