There's this ongoing debate in some circles about whether or not Jesus could have sinned. There seem to be three possibilities. One, of course, is that Jesus was a free man and could have sinned if he had chosen to do so. That's controversial in the sense that it is unimaginable that Jesus could have chosen to sin, but it does allow that Jesus was human and could at least associate with the temptations that we all face as humans.
The second possibility is that it would have been impossible for Jesus to have sinned since he lived not only according to the Jewish Law but also according to divine and absolute morality. In other words, it was impossible for him to violate God's moral law. Jesus was restricted in this sense. Some things he was forbidden and thus incapable of choosing to do. For instance, He was celibate and could not possibly have married or had sex in his life. When Satan tempted him, he could not possibly have accepted Satan's offers.
The third possibility is a little more complex. I think the best way to describe this third possibility is that Jesus led a charmed life. Whatever he chose to do, no matter what he chose, was not sin because Jesus was God and God creates reality as he goes and whatever God chooses to do, by very definition it isn't sin. If it ever had been sin before, when Jesus chose to do it, it ceased to be sin, even if only for Him. The Prophet Mohammed lived just such a life. The Quran was being written during Mohammed's life and some of the Quran was written after the fact to justify what Muhammad had just chosen to do. This seems especially so when you study Mohammed's various wives.
I tend to accept the first possibility, that Jesus didn't sin because he knew the Law and chose to obey it. The second is a possibility also, but I reject the third explanation. I reject the notion that reality exists at the whim of a supernatural being.
I wish I could remember where I read it, but I recently read in someone's blog that he (this blogger) was talking to someone in the White House who was explaining to him about the difference between how it used to be in Washington and how it is now. Basically it went something like this. In the past, the media used to analyze what went on in Washington and report on it to the public. But now, you can analyze Washington reality all you want, but as soon as you do, the reality changes because in the White House, "We now make reality." That isn't word-for-word, but it is how I understood the conversation.
What it means is that the White House is exercising option three above, that reality is conforming to the Bush White House. When Bush said Saddam had WMDs, they existed. When Bush said he didn't, they didn't exist. No problem, no conflict, no worries. Yesterday I heard Bush explaining about the need to get information from the terrorists to protect Americans. Bush was presenting the argument being used to justify the secret CIA torture camps. Then he said basically that whatever we do, we don't torture. When Bush says America doesn't torture, then no matter what America does, it isn't torture. The reality of what torture is shifts with the Bush doctrine.
You see, America, it all depends on what your definition of "is" is.
I'm not sure that the American public is catching on to this yet, but many are becoming suspicious. Many are able to recognize that there's been a major shift in America's policies under Bush, a shift for the worse. Americans are beginning to understand that they don't understand the Republican leadership in Washington and they're beginning to suspect that the problem is a credibility problem. The problem is that whenever we think we're on solid ground, the ground shifts beneath us, and we're realizing that it's an eerie feeling. We're beginning to see that it's because of George Bush and his administration and certain other Republican leaders in Washington that we're getting this creepy feeling.
