What alienates us from Christ?

Answer 1

Ourselves, mostly. Many of us have a tendency to take the events surrounding Him in The Bible too literally when in fact they were meant in a spiritual or metaphorical, rather than in an actually physical, way. Similarly, Jesus did a lot of his teachings in parables and carefully worded symbolism, for two main reasons- the first was that most of the multitudes He was preaching to were simple, uneducated folk, nearly all of them illiterate and with little or no experience of life outside of their own communities. They were also only familiar with the Jewish Old Testament, as The Gospels had not yet been written. Christ thus had to phrase his wording in a way that they could understand and which also did not antagonise the populace by appearing to go against the Old Testament. He also had to be very careful to put his Word across in a way that did not enable the religious heirarchy of the day to ensnare him or have him arrested on charges of blasphemy before his time on earth was done. He was an extremely intelligent young man, and also a very shrewd communicator. But a lot of people in the present day and age, most particularly fundamentalist Christians, tend to interpret what He said quite literally, word for word, when He never meant it to be- a lot of us thus struggle to understand how a loving Jesus could say some of the things that seem to contradict His humanity and his putting a cross of God's message, whereas in fact they don't.

Other people today suffer from internal crises and fears that make us question how a loving, caring God can allow suffering, torment and some of the awful things that have happened throughout history- or how He can allow us to undergo domestic or internal distresses of our own such as dreadful bereavement, mental or physical illness, unjust punishment and accusations, and so forth. To this there is no straightforward answer, other than to say three things:

1) In many cases, suffering is caused by humanity, not by God. God does not make wars, unjust law, political crises, financial disasters or any other such things, it is people who do this. He did not cause the Crusades, the Mediaeval witch-hunts, the First World War, the Titanic disaster, the Holocaust or any other such man-made atrocities. Unfortunately, others suffer as a result of the actions of the few, and it is these victims for whom Jesus and God are there to pray to and who will provide comfort and internal relief to the victims. There are natural disasters too which cause terrible suffering, such as epidemics, famine, drought, earthquakes, flooding, tsunami's and so forth- these are NOT caused by humanity, but even although we cannot know why God lets these things happen, the same principle of Him providing solice and help to believers in Him applies.

2) God cannot prove that He exists by constantly intervening in order to prevent bad things from happening, as this would be a denial of Faith and without Faith, he can do nothing.

3) At the end of the day, it's not easy being mortal. Jesus never said that it was, He of all people knew that it wasn't- but He DID say that there is a God there to whom we can turn when all seems lost. In extremes of grief or anguish we can cry out in despair, asking God where He is and what he is doing to help us and why He is allowing awful things to happen- but He will help us in his own way. We cannot know the mind of God, and allowing Him to help us can require a great deal of patience, time and steadfast faith, but He moves in mysterious ways and He will always be there for us at the end.