Who Decides what Jesus Said?

The phrase, “In God We Trust,” is believed to have led the United States through the hard time of American Civil War and is now even carved and printed on all the coins and bills since 1900s. During the Civil War, population that relied on religious beliefs, mainly on Christianity, to alleviate their pain had increased. What is it so powerful about Christianity that allows the whole nation to believe that, as long as people have faith in God, everything will be alright? Bible has been the only source of Jesus’, son of God, life and his missionary. However, Jesus himself did not write the book; the Gospels did, and they didn’t even start to write until about 30 years after Jesus’ death. Where did they get all the source of information? Who told them that the miracles that were said to be performed by Jesus actually happened? While each Gospel covers dissimilar parts of Jesus’ life, some common details among the four don’t fit into each other that well. Nobody really knows if the Gospels interpreted Jesus’ life accurately.

Furthermore, as different churches have evolved, each division interprets the contents of Bible in various ways and the Christians do not always agree with each other. So who is in charge of spreading the right words of Jesus to people? What did Jesus really say that he wanted to let the people know? The authors of the Gospels added their opinions into the stories; some thinkers like Thomas Aquinas during tenth to fourteenth centuries developed different issues about faith and reasons in Christianity. These are all the ways that people try to figure out what Jesus was giving to people. If the opinions are not too extreme, they will be accepted by the public and used for future reference of the religion. Because of these interpretations of God’s words, they have become very powerful and trusting to people who need some spiritual comfort through this indiscernible hope that might give them miracles to change. Bible always has the most say about Jesus’ teaching and it will still be, unless there are some more reliable sources that can be proved to be more directly from Jesus himself than just from other people’s thoughts and opinions.