I See Men as Trees, Walking: The Crowd in Untruth, the Single Individual, and Becoming a Self: Volume 2—Mark 5: 1 to 8: 38

by Bryan M. Christman

Publisher:

Resource Publications

, 2024

Overview

”He took the blind man by the hand . . . and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ’Do you see anything?’ He said, ‘I see men, but they look like trees, walking.’ Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again and he saw everything clearly.” Mark’s account of a blind man needing two healing touches from Jesus graphically depicts the stubborn blindness of his disciples. Peter epitomized this blindness when he was tempted by the popular view that Jesus was the Rome-conquering savior of Israel, rather than the suffering Servant of God. Also, the disciples didn’t understand that Jesus miraculously fed the famished crowds with a few loaves and fish to meet immediate need and provide leftover fragments of food for future need. Salvation was pictured for all time. Essentially, Mark’s Gospel gathered “leftovers,” historical fragments of Jesus’ life to convey God’s salvation across history to those Kierkegaard called “the follower at second hand." Like Peter, disciples and even the crowds are tempted to false “salvations" where self is lost. But ironically, persons only become a self by taking up their own cross, enabled by Jesus’ second touch.

Praise for I See Men as Trees, Walking

“This book brings the insights of the great Christian writer Søren Kierkegaard into conversation with several stories in the Gospel of Mark. Doing so illuminates both what is going on in the lives of the characters who interact with Jesus as well as the point of the stories Jesus tells to shed light on what it means to follow Jesus in the modern world.”

—John Sanders, professor emeritus of religious studies, Hendrix College



“Kierkegaard claimed that the Bible is not just a book that we read, but a book that reads us. It holds a mirror up to our selfhood and requires the hard work of self-examination. Bryan Christman’s Kierkegaardian analysis of the Gospel of Mark does the same thing by inviting not only a deeper understanding of the biblical text, but a better relationship to one’s own becoming.”

—J. Aaron Simmons, author of Camping with Kierkegaard



“Kierkegaard once said that reading the Bible is not an exercise in bland scholarship but, rather, a spiritual practice, whereby one enters into an intimate, edifying relationship with God. Bryan Christman has taken this claim to heart—indeed, in striking fashion. His Kierkegaardian commentary on the Gospel of Mark is insightful and provocative, but it’s also earnest and searching. It likely won’t find its way into an historical-critical guide to the New Testament, but, like Kierkegaard himself, Christman is just fine with that.”

—Christopher B. Barnett, professor of theology and religious studies, Villanova University

Product Details

• Title: I See Men as Trees, Walking: The Crowd in Untruth, the Single Individual, and Becoming a Self
• Author: Bryan M. Christman
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 248
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9798385203314, 9798385203291, 9798385203307
• Resource ID: LLS:9798385203314
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-23T00:22:45Z

About Bryan M. Christman

Bryan M. Christman, a lifelong landscaper and aspiring writer, is husband to Debbi, father of four, and grandfather to a number of lively grandchildren. He has degrees from Alfred State College and the Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. He authored The Gospel in the Dock (Resource, 2021) and the article "Lewis and Kierkegaard as Missionaries to Post-Christian Pagans.”