The Third Look: What and Why
(Mapping Out the Journey)
We Need a Third Look. As we tread our spiritual path, it is imperative that we keep step with Jesus. Nay more, we strive to heighten our bondedness with him. And so we fix our gaze on Jesus in our spiritual retreats and other religious activities. However, it is not enough to keep going back to the same Jesus time after time, simply taking a second look at Jesus. We need a third look.
Three Looks at Jesus. There are at least three ways of fixing our gaze on Jesus. As Jesus himself looks at himself—this is the first look. As Western theology has looked at Jesus – this is the second look. As the poor look at Jesus—this is the third look.
The First Look. The First Look at Jesus was the way Jesus understood himself, his own life and his own work. It was the look at Jesus through Jesus’ own eyes. Moreover, many of the first generation Christians, not yet influenced by the later Western outlook, also possessed the First Look at Jesus.
The Second Look. The Second Look at Jesus was the way Graeco-Roman and Western eyes later regarded Jesus, his life and his work. For example, while Jesus’ concern was the total well-being of the total human person, the Second Look tended to make redemption of souls Jesus’ concern. While Jesus liked to talk in terms of food, the Second Look spoke in terms of sanctifying grace.
This Second Look lasted from approximately 50 C.E. 1 to the 1960s! A very long segment of Church history! And even today, as we enter the third millennium, the Second Look is still the way many Filipino Christians see Jesus. It is the view which early missionaries from Europe and North America, with much good will, taught us. We in turn pass it on to our children, parishioners, students, retreatants. This Second Look is the view that I learned in my youth. It is still prevalent in most of our catechetical institutes, liturgical and spirituality centers—and even seminaries and theological schools!
This view is not wrong. In fact, with it people have reached heroic levels of zeal and holiness. Yet today, we must say that by itself it no longer vibrates with the rhythm of our people’s lives. It can no longer provide answers to many of our pain-laden questions. It is time for a Third Look.
The Third Look: Through the Eyes of the Poor. What is the Third Look? It could simply mean a view that follows the Second, once the Second is seen to be inadequate. More significantly, however, the Third Look is the view of the Third World peoples. It is a look at Jesus, his life and his work—by and through the eyes of the poor peoples of the Third World. It is the look at Jesus by the poor and oppressed, the awakened, struggling and selfless poor, who want to create a just, humane and sustainable world. It is also the view of people who themselves are not poor but are in genuine solidarity with the poor.
The next paragraph deserves special attention:
First and Third Looks Are Cousins. The Third Look is very similar to the First. For example, let us see how the First and Third Looks would see Jesus in the face of hunger and hungry people. The Third Look would be ill-at-ease with a Jesus that says: ‘Hunger is the will of God, a cross God sends you now in order for you to gain merits for heaven.’
The Third Look would be in search of a Jesus who says: ‘I want to see you freed from hunger.’ Well, that in fact is the way Jesus sees himself. The Jesus who wants to feed rather than the Jesus who wants to inflict pain is the First Look Jesus. Thus, the concerns and questions of the conscientized poor are similar to those of Jesus – as I hope to re-discover with you, dear reader(s). The First and Third Looks are first cousins. The Second Look is a distant relative.
Jesus and the Poor Share the Same Point of View. Jesus and the poor stand on the same ground and view life from a similar vantage point. This is a fact which will become more and more of an insight as we proceed.
Heaven or New Earth? In this introductory chapter where we are mapping out our journey, I am just offering some examples. Let us take another example. Here is a question that concerns all of us: ‘Where are we finally going? What is our ultimate destiny?’ The Second Look would answer, ‘heaven.’ Third and First Looks say: ‘new heaven and new earth!’ There is a world of a difference between the two goals, and, consequently on the kind of life-journey that one takes to get there. The Second Look wants souls to go to heaven above. The Third and First Looks invite people to journey toward a new world on earth, right here.
Dialogue with Philippine Church. The Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II) is a cause for celebration in Philippine Church history. 2 The First and Third Looks are echoed in PCP II. None of the desiccated Jesus, abstracted from real life, preserved in immobile theological formulas, but rather a Jesus that has life and motion and story. PCP II says, in a way uncharacteristic of Church formulations: ‘We have to retell his story to ourselves, that we may, more credibly, more authoritatively, tell it to others. This is our belief.’ 3
PCP II was more interested in telling Jesus’ story than drafting formulas and definitions about Jesus and his nature. Yet, because PCP II is only a document and is only a beginning, the First and Third Looks are still sending beeper messages to much of Philippine catechesis, theology, liturgy, pastoral activity and even spirituality: with what Look do we, the Philippine Church, see Jesus, his message and many other consequential things?
Contact with the Poor. What do we do to understand Jesus properly? The answer is clear … and hard: We need to see Jesus through the eyes of the poor in struggle. Without living contact with the poor, knowing Jesus is a most difficult task—even for people who have given much thought and study to Jesus. Contact with the poor is not the same as concept of the poor. Once this difficult task is faced and done, however, rediscovering Jesus is easy, even pleasant. After all, Jesus was basically an unsophisticated person, not a metaphysical puzzle. It was only later that followers spun a complex theology around him.
The lives of the poor are like the great rivers Mekong, Ganges, Jordan. Contact with the poor is like contact with a river. When you encounter it, you can wet your feet in it and move on. You can build a bridge or ride a banca to cross it. Or you can pause to bathe, to drink, to refresh. I do not mean that the poor are perfect people. I mean that their lives, including their misery, can play the role of baptismal waters in our lives. Some form of immersion in that river can cleanse, nourish and refresh our often uninteresting spiritualities.
This contact with the poor is quite important. Without it, anyone who has read this far, would do well to just put this book aside. The danger is not that of not understanding. The danger is understanding without insight. It is as if someone mistakes dream for reality. The consequences can be fatal. Therefore, to those who, out of a good heart, might be tempted to use this book in teaching Christology, but without some significant immersion among the poor, I say: ‘resist and desist.’
Tool for Interpreting the Bible. Biblical scholars use a supermarket of instruments—historical, archaeological, linguistic, literary, form-critical, redactional, structural, sociological. This book makes sober and discerning use of these instruments. But it adds another: the Third Look. Yes, the Third Look is a ‘tool’ for biblical interpretation. One’s world-view, perspective, standpoint—all this makes a difference in one’s interpretation of Jesus, of the Scripture, in fact, of life itself. There is indeed a battery of sophisticated tools for dissecting the Scriptures and you might be in control of them, but if your world-view is a mismatch to that of Jesus, you could miss. It is equally possible for someone, with no such bag of tools but possessing a heart and mind similar to that of Jesus, to see.
The Third Look and Other Methods. These past 100 years have given the world an outburst of invaluable methods of biblical interpretation. We have learned, for instance, that the gospels are not tape recordings of Jesus’ words and deeds but reflect as well the faith meanings of the early Church and the gospel writers. Yet these methods, like most inventions of mice and men, have their limitations and problems. Perhaps it is because hard cold steel is being applied to cut up life. And that is what the gospel text is about, life. It is about the life and times of the biblical people. The word ‘mechanistic’ has sometimes been used to refer either to the method or to the user. For example, it is claimed that Jesus never associated with tax collectors and sinners. Is that really so?
Let us use an alternative route. The Jesus-story would certainly have a core. With the judicious use of accepted methods, it is possible to identify such a core. In that core, as we will see, you would find Jesus’ Kingdom proclamation, his mission statements, his proclamation of good news to the poor, plus a few other constituents. In that core we will discover a Jesus who is eminently concerned for the poor and marginals. Given such a core, it is easier to see a Jesus who would not mind being seen with tax collectors and the poor, many of whom were tagged ‘sinners’ in Jesus’ time. Association with such marginals would not jar with the spirit of such a Jesus, in fact, would be in harmony with it.
Here, by the way, is an important reason why the Third Look is a tool for interpretation: the core of the Jesus-story is Third World in essence; it has all the smells and aura of the Third World. Jesus is a Third World person – this we will see gradually as the story unfolds. Thus, the Third Look together with the other accepted methods, in dialectical complementarity, can give us a better grasp of who Jesus is.
Main Tool. In this book, then, I either use or presuppose contemporary methods, principally the ‘historico-critical’ and ‘sociological’ tools of interpretation, 4 but our main tool is the Third Look, a set of eyeglasses, if you will, that looks at Jesus through the prism of the Third World poor … and thus hopefully through the eyes of Jesus himself. This prism is indispensable for rediscovering the original Jesus. This, of all the instruments for biblical interpretation, is by far the most important … and the most neglected. In its simplest form, it can take the form of asking: ‘what questions or concerns would the poor put to Jesus and to the gospel text?’
Inaccurate Bible Translations. The First and Third Looks also question certain inaccurate translations of the Bible. The Good News Bible, a translation by middle class Americans for middle class Americans, renders: ‘Happy are those who are humble for they shall receive what God has promised’ (Mt 5:5). What is it that God has promised? This Second Look mis-translation is shy about telling us what it is. Heaven perhaps? But Jesus’ original version is unequivocal and unmistakable: ‘… for they shall inherit the land’ or ‘… they shall possess the earth!’ The salvation promised here is the good solid earth! This is Jesus’ First Look, and the safest access to it is through Third Look eyeglasses or the eyes of the poor.
Cosmic Christ. One of the significant re-discoveries of the Third Look, especially in Asia, is the Christ of whom it is said: ‘in him all things hold together’ (Col 1:17). This Christ is hardly discernible in Second Look spirituality. The oneness of all things in Christ is the Christian equivalent to the inter-connectedness of all reality attested to by oriental and indigenous religions and by contemporary physics. The door that opens to this cosmic Christ is internal silence rather than rational religiosity.
The Enemy: Fear. A Third Look reading has one big enemy, fear. We have grown up with a certain tradition in our homes or in the seminary. We are secure and comfortable in it. We fear something which does not look quite like that tradition, even if it is shown to be inadequate. Some years ago, liturgical language was shifting from Latin to the vernacular. A regular church-goer was heard to say: ‘I do not go to a vernacular mass because they no longer use the language of Jesus!’ We know, of course, that Jesus’ language was Aramaic, not Latin! Would that this person did indeed go beyond the Latin and Western tradition, all the way back to Jesus himself. Such is the modest effort in this book—to go back, via the Third Look, not only to the language but also to the original Jesus. Hopefully we will do this with discernment and prudence, but without the fear that cripples. Though perhaps sorely tempted, Jesus had no such fear in the face of the accepted tradition of his day. Could it be because he was in touch with the Source?
Frame of Mind. The following dispositions would be desirable: (1) The open mind of someone in search. One who is happy with the way things are may not find anything here to nourish his/her spirit. (2) A critical mind that says: ‘Show me.’ This critical attitude would be occupied mostly in scrutinizing the biblical data to check whether the Third Look is the correct reading. (3) A spirit of prayer.
About the First Look Too. Although the title of this book is A Third Look at Jesus, it is as much about the First Look. We look through the eyes of the poor, and, in so doing, we rediscover the First Look and the original Jesus of biblical tradition. A rural missionary Sister said it well: ‘I understood the Jesus of the Bible through the eyes of the poor.’
Having made the rediscovery, we then have a Jesus who can interact with our lives today. It is this biblical Jesus, and no other, that we should invite to be in dialogue with us today.
I believe that the heart of contextual theology is the dialogue between the biblical Jesus and our life today.
Self-Critique. In many ways, this book is about my own passage – or should I say, struggle – from the Second Look to the First and Third Looks. Critique of the Second Look is self-critique as well. It is, however, not an invitation to self-flagellation. It is a spur to move on. Above all, it is Jesus and his invigorating memories that give us the challenge and inspiration to make the passage.
Road Map and Signposts. We need a road map and signposts. Data from the Scriptures will be our signposts. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Jesus himself will provide the signposts for much of the Jesus-story up until his death on the cross. This portion of the Jesus-story—the pre-crucifixion ministry of Jesus – has to recover the autonomy that it has lost through the centuries, having been made to serve basically as only a preamble to the cross. The Third Look, more than the Second, has the resources for the retelling of this pre-crucifixion story.
From the cross to Christ’s coming again, including the risen and cosmic Christ, is another portion of the Jesus-story. For this portion, our main signposts will be supplied by Paul, John, and the rest of the New Testament Scriptures. The Hebrew Scriptures – usually referred to as the ‘Old Testament’ – will also provide information. We will therefore attempt a biblical reporting on Jesus. It is not a ‘systematic theology’ on Jesus. Although as students, my classmates and I were privileged to study under the reputedly most renowned systematic theologian in the Catholic Church, it was biblical studies that taught me several liberating insights. One of them is that Jesus eludes systems, including the one we have saddled ourselves with today.
A Companion. In this book, I would like to be simply a companion, explaining the road map and pointing to the roadsigns. I hope to be pardoned if most of the conversation seems like a monologue. I will make efforts to remember that with me are co-travelers who one day may sit down and chat with, and even interpellate, me.
A Guidebook along a Road Least Traveled. I was wondering, dear reader, in what way this book might be of use to you. After a season of groping, I realize that this could serve as a guidebook. It is a guidebook not only for us in the Third World but also for anyone who wants to retrace their steps back to the original Jesus and to re-discover the total story of Jesus. It is a guidebook through a road least traveled.
Indispensable. Indispensable for our journey are the biblical data which will perform the role of signposts, and, the Third Look eyeglasses. Of course, you, dear co-traveler, will put on these eyeglasses on a trial basis. But hopefully you will come to the happy realization that through them you are looking at the real Jesus.
Let this be an adventure of the scholarly mind, but also of the seeker-heart.
Knowing without Knowing. One vital remark before we set out. In this book, we will need to make use of words and thoughts; and the scholarly mind will be busy at work. However, I wish to remind you of another way of ‘knowing’ Jesus. It is a way of knowing Jesus beyond the mind. It is being in touch with ‘the Christ who lives in me’ (Gal 2:20) without words, without thoughts. It must be said emphatically that this silent way of ‘knowing without knowing’ is infinitely superior. There is no authentic knowing of Jesus without it. Therefore, although this kind of knowing will receive quantitively far less space in this book, I would like to assume that you, dear reader, are or will be engaged in knowing Jesus beyond the mind. As a reminder, there will be a little watchword at the end of each chapter: ‘Be still and know …’ (Ps 46:10).
The How. Knowing without knowing, knowing beyond the mind—how to go about this? Well, since it is more a way of being than a discipline, there really is no ‘how to.’ However, one may speak of facilitating ‘methods’ and there are a thousand and one such ‘methods.’
One simple method is a favorite Eastern practice of being aware of your breath as you inhale and exhale; in so activating your awareness, you minimize the mad circus—thought tumbling after thought—in your mind. Being thus aware of something simple, your breathing, you have more or less evacuated your mind of its clatter, chatter and clutter. You will have gone ‘beyond the mind’ to a lesser or greater degree. By that very fact you are on the way or already in touch with a silent point in your being, the ‘Christ in me’ (Gal 2:20). You have made the crossing from thought to simple awareness, from your surface I/me to your deepest self, which is the Divine in you. ‘Knowing’ without the mediation of word or thought; knowing by being in touch—what better way to know?
You may have fantastic success on first try, like a simple barrio lady I know … or you may not. No matter. Be patient. Above all, be playful. Just a few minutes a day … or more, as your hunger grows. All you have to do is be aware of your breath … or of the silent Christ in you. Nothing more. Leave the rest to God. God is your best ‘instructor.’
A Way of Becoming. Incidentally, this way of being is not just a way of knowing. It is also a way of becoming. I suppose many of us have entertained, with varying degrees of intensity, the wish to ‘change,’ to ‘be transformed,’ to ‘make progress’ in our spiritual life, ‘to become better persons.’ And we tried many ways and approaches. And perhaps with degrees of success, from pedestrian to phenomenal. Try this simple way of awareness. You might discover with others that it is not only a way of knowing, it is also a way of becoming.
But let us go now to the adventure of the Third Look at Jesus. Put on your Third Look glasses and let us go….
Be Still and Know.