Crazy Hope

…wrote the following several years ago now about the hope we cling to which flies in the face of logic, hangs on through utter despair, and refuses to die in spite of the most trying of circumstances. 

Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  ~Romans 8:24b, ESV

Your situation is bleak and the outlook is grim.  The prognosis is terminal—no way and no how, not now, not later, never.  Slim to none and slim just left town, not a snow balls chance in a sauna.  And the only light you see at the end the tunnel appears to be a freight train.

I wrote that to myself sitting smack dab in the middle of a coffee shop one afternoon in December of 2005, a few months after my divorce was final.

Have you ever hoped in a wish?  Have you ever had the gnawing feeling that you were playing in a football game in which your team was down 45-0 with less than two minutes remaining and your star quarterback was on the sidelines with a broken throwing arm?  You were down to put it mildly, and you knew better than anyone that you were out a long while ago.  You had just wished somebody would have put you out of your misery sooner.  Have you ever sensed that something was so hopeless that it was beyond God’s help?  Have you ever run out of out of ideas about how to stave off the inevitable?

An Excerpt from My Book Project

        

This snippet is taken from the chapter: “The Wrong End Zone”…

      

As a kid youth pastor almost a couple of decades ago now, I ran across a story that’s turned out to be pretty reminiscent of my own life experience. 

 

On January 1, 1929, the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets faced the California Golden Bears in the famed Rose Bowl.  During the second quarter, Golden Bears center Roy Riegels recovered a fumble by the Yellow Jackets Jack “Stumpy” Thomason 30 yards away from what could have been a touchdown for his team, but he somehow got turned around and ran the wrong way.  A teammate caught up with Riegels at the 3-yard-line just before he scored a touchdown for the opposing team and tried to turn him back around, but Riegels was quickly tackled by a swarm of Yellow Jackets on the 1-yard-line.  At halftime both teams gathered separately as is pigskin custom.  In the Golden Bears dressing room it was quiet as a deer in headlights

Book Plans

It is with reservation I write today.  I haven’t blogged here for several weeks now and its on purpose in case you were curious.  Over the course of the last few years I have been tossing around the idea of writing a book.  I have stopped and I have started again numerous times.  Of late, I have been inspired again to put my foot on the gas and go for it.   

The last couple years in particular have been good in terms of writing on my blog here and elsewhere (formerly at Blogger).  My blogging has provided an avenue to share in so in ways that have been both helpful for me and hopefully beneficial and encouraging to those who have read.  It is my intention to return to blogging, but I am currently unable as my time is needed elsewhere as I finish my book proposal and seek out an agent.

Hoping to have a good report soon.

Tough Love Jesus

We’ve been looking at the unaltered, unadulterated, and unchanging Jesus.  We have enough challenges in following Jesus without being ignorant about who it is we worship.  This post continues the discussion about the Jesus presented in the scriptures to draw some clearer distinctions between the timeless Jesus of history and the pretend one we hear about much too often.                

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him (John 3:16-18, The Message).  

Alright, I’ll admit it, I can’t stand Tough Love Jesus.  He is about as useless as a copy of one of those Y2K preparation guides turned out to be.  While I will agree with the hard-liners that Jesus doesn’t love us with a mamby-pamby kind of love (he wasn’t a wimp, you know the picture that gets painted in those cheesy gospel films, do they still make those films?), I won’t agree with the hard-liners when it comes to what is underneath their conditional love teaching. 

Here’s the skinny: If Jesus is as tightfisted with his love as many of those who claim to be his spokepeople propose he is, I’d say Jesus is no different than any other religious scam artist.  But thankfully, Jesus loves us with a love to die for, delivered by nail scared hands. Name another “god” who voluntarily laid down his perfect life as a ransom for our sinful ones?  Tough Love Jesus loves us with a love that is conditional.  He is the champion of those don’t have the stomach for a Jesus who made himself vulnerable, they prefer a Jesus who cares more about rules than he does souls. 

This artificial Jesus is chompin’ at the bit to cut you from his team the moment you get out of line.  His top priority is to whip you into shape.  This Jesus loves you as long as you behave. When you are bad, well, you are out of luck. It’s “good riddance and don’t come back” when you mess up one too many times.  Second chances?  Not hardly, so dont’ ask for a third.  Tough Love Jesus questions your salvation as if it were constantly in the balance and ever under review as he continues to move the bar and raise the stakes—making assurance of salvation a delusion. This extremely popular Jesus would have you fretting and questioning whether you have done enough to get into Heaven, while the real Jesus has secured your splendid future without end and there isn’t anything you need add or can subtract from his sufficient sacrificewhich makes it all possible.

For me, I can relate to Tough Love Jesus, I have been associated folks who’d fight you ’till the death for challenging this Jesus to a dual.  Tough Love Jesus wouldn’t consider going after a lost sheep, he’d let the dumb sheep find his own way home so he’d learn a valuable lesson.  And if he never made it home, Tough Love Jesus wouldn’t lose any sleep. 

¹Now the tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathering around to hear him. ²But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

³Then Jesus told them this parable: ^4′Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? ⁵And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders ⁶and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ ⁷I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent (Luke 15:1-7, NIV).

We are Pelagians at heart and in turn tend to highlight the tough side of God’s love.  It’s safe, it’s human, and it’s calculable.  But God’s love is none of the above. 

Karl Barth is regarded by many scholars and preachers as possibly the greatest theologian of the twentieth century.  Philip Yancey writes, “When the renowned theologian Karl Barth visited the University of Chicago, students and scholars crowded around him.  At a press conference, one asked, ‘Dr. Barth, what is the most profound truth you have learned in your studies?’  Without hesitation he replied, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’  I agree with Karl Barth.  Why, then, do I so often do act as if I am trying to earn that love?  Why do I have such trouble accepting it?  ~Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing about Grace? (page 67).  

God’s love demonstrated in Christ isn’t tough, it’s ferocious and it’s free for the believing.  Jesus is the lover of your soul.  He loves you with a love that doesn’t take a vacation or a leave of absence.  And you can’t be any more loved than you are right this second.

Boxed In Jesus

We’ve been looking at the unaltered, unadulterated, and unchanging Jesus.  We have enough challenges in following Jesus without being ignorant about who it is we worship.  This post continues the discussion about the Jesus presented in the scriptures to draw some clearer distinctions between the timeless Jesus of history and the pretend one we hear about much too often.                                                                                                                           

Our problem is this: we usually discover him [Jesus] within some denominational or Christian ghetto. We meet him in a province and, having caught some little view, we paint him in smaller strokes. The Lion of Judah is reduced to something kittenish because our understanding cannot, at first, write larger definitions.  ~Calvin Miller

Some of us get the idea somewhere along the way that Jesus can be confined to the little box we put him in. 

So, as we have discussed in the last two posts, Jesus isn’t committed to a political party, or an agenda we set for him.  He isn’t committed to our ideologies.  He isn’t limited in his actions by our theories. And he isn’t constrained by the boundaries we set for him. 

The Jesus who said Let the children come to me; was the same Jesus who ran the money grubbers out of the temple.  The Jesus who fed the poor, healed the sick, brought sight to the blind, and raised the dead; was the same Jesus who hung out regularly with the shady and those with murky resumes.  The Jesus who left the riches and comforts of Heaven; was the same Jesus who knelt down and washed the stinky feet of his disciples. The Jesus who rebuked and riled the religious bigots of his day; was the same Jesus whose closest confidants predominantly included blue collar every day folks. And the Jesus who turned the water into wine and surely turned a few heads in doing so; was the same Jesus who prayed for his killers as he lay beaten in a pool of his own blood—Father forgive them, they know not what they do. 

He was teaching in one of the meeting places on the Sabbath. There was a woman present, so twisted and bent over with arthritis that she couldn’t even look up. She had been afflicted with this for eighteen years. When Jesus saw her, he called her over. “Woman, you’re free!” He laid hands on her and suddenly she was standing straight and tall, giving glory to God.

The meeting-place president, furious because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the congregation, “Six days have been defined as work days. Come on one of the six if you want to be healed, but not on the seventh, the Sabbath.”

But Jesus shot back, “You frauds! Each Sabbath every one of you regularly unties your cow or donkey from its stall, leads it out for water, and thinks nothing of it. So why isn’t it all right for me to untie this daughter of Abraham and lead her from the stall where Satan has had her tied these eighteen years?”

When he put it that way, his critics were left looking quite silly and redfaced. The congregation was delighted and cheered him on (Luke 13:10-17, The Message).

And just as Jesus would not refrain from healing on the Sabbath, he will not be subject to our inferior thinking either. Attempting to box in Jesus is no new phenomenon.

It’s pretty clear; Jesus was too concerned with meeting the most desperate needs of people to let trite and meaningless rule-keeping stop him from doing what others said he shouldn’t.

We might take note and follow his lead.

Hippie Jesus

We’ve been looking at the unaltered, unadulterated, and unchanging Jesus.  We have enough challenges in following Jesus without being ignorant about who it is we worship.  This post continues the discussion about the Jesus presented in the scriptures to draw some clearer distinctions between the timeless Jesus of history and the pretend one we hear about much too often.   

Suppose we heard an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness; some thought him too dark, and some too fair. One explanation… would be that he might be an odd shape. But there is another explanation. He might be the right shape…. Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is really the ordinary thing; at least the normal thing, the centre.  ~G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Seems a necessary and healthy rebellion is underway.  This holy rebellion is based in a rejection of a stodgy, ineffective, and moribund religion made up of nothing more than lame slogans, tired politics, rigid dogma, stingy love, convenient compassion, lopsided justice, and religious gimmicks. 

I say good. 

Republican Jesus is twisted.  He is not biblical.  I understand I may have raised the ire of a few of my dwindling republican friends (who I would add, some of which are brothers and sisters in Christ) with my last post.  No one commented, but I did get an email that brought to my attention various points my post raised that I might wish to explain (but won’t here, maybe elsewhere at a later date).  For the record, I am not a liberal democrat, nor am I a conservative one (an oxymoron I realize).     

A caricature depicting Jesus as American is an abomination as far as I am concerned (Jesus doesn’t choose us based on our race or gender, see Galatians 3:27-29 ).  This line of reasoning suggests that somehow if you aren’t a flag waving American, or at least have affection in your heart for the United States, you can’t be a Christian (try telling that to some starving orphan who lost both of her parents on the other side of the globe due to one of our bombs, and then tell me that God endorses your doing so).  As I have stated elsewhere in so many words—as Christians, we aren’t here to promote a national agenda, we are here to proclaim a heavenly Kingdom. 

The real Jesus is not some egocentric power broker when it pertains to morals either, we have the “Religious Right” who do more than plenty for that unholy cause.  But there is a danger however, and it is this; to throw out the baby with the bath water.  Just because Jesus has been badly misrepresented and made out to be no more than a boring Sunday School teacher by some within the Church, or a hall monitor on steroids concerned merely with outward appearances—by others—doesn’t nullify the genuine Jesus we have been discussing here of late. 

Just because I decried a patriotic and political version of a Jesus who doesn’t exist as long as truth is involved (see “Republican Jesus”, last post), doesn’t mean there isn’t the opposite mischaracterization.  There is another version of Jesus that is just as sickening.  I will call him Hippie Jesus.  It’s that Jesus who has a sponge for a back bone, no hatred for sin, and little concern over all matters of justice (including those who can’t fight for themselves).  

Recycling everything you can get your hands on, including your worn out underwear, won’t get you into Heaven according to the scriptures.  You can be as “green” as Kermit The Frog and be just as unregenerate as anyone (and still end up in Hell).

Hippie Jesus worships the creation and its creatures, the real Jesus is the Creator God—and he alone deserves any and all worship.

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:15-20, ESV).

For my friends who insist that Jesus only ate organic granola, that he sported braids in his hair, that he wore a peace sign strapped around his neck, that his nose was pierced, that he referred to everyone as dude, or that he wouldn’t be caught dead in dress clothes—I’d beg to differ.   Hey, it’s cool if you want to have dreadlocks, shave your sideburns all crazy, and wear shoes made out of seaweed.  But I’d like to be allowed to keep my goatee, not be required to change my geeky hairstyle, and wear my black Adidas flip-flops  instead—we don’t have to go to extremes and try to justify our preferences by making some sort of holy dress code out of them, or by mandating a “Christian” grooming style.  Being a Volkswagen fan, I’d like to think it’s what Jesus would drive if he were walking (or driving) around today.  But I dare not make a religion out of my petty tastes and trivial opinions.  So often, that’s what we do though.   

We can miss a lot of things. But when it comes to the person of Jesus and who he is, missing it has eternal implications. We don’t get to choose who Jesus might be.  “Depeche Mode” sang, your own personal Jesus—Well, sorry to disappoint, but Jesus isn’t looking for those who craft their own version of a designer Jesus, rather, he’s calling disciples who drop their nets.  Jesus isn’t some guy with a phony smile and a plastic hairdo behind door number two.  He isn’t some pick in a dating gameshow where you get three choices, and all three are right.  Just picking the Jesus that best works for you doesn’t cut it. 

“A god of our own understanding” is our language, not a term Jesus ever ascribed to his Father—God Almighty.  The scriptures teach that God is One, and he is exclusive.  And he is God, we are not.  We must define him on his terms and not on our own—otherwise we are fooling ourselves (and there is plenty of that to go around).

And if there still are any disputes about whether Jesus was a hippie or a politician, let us remember that Jesus was a rabbi.

Republican Jesus

We’ve been looking at the unaltered, unadulterated, and unchanging Jesus.  We have enough challenges in following Jesus without being ignorant about who it is we worship.  This post continues the discussion about the Jesus presented in the scriptures to draw some clearer distinctions between the timeless Jesus of history and the pretend one we hear about much too often.   

                                          

…I believe that dispensing God’s grace is the Christian’s main contribution. As Gordon McDonald said, the world can do anything the church can do except one thing: it cannot show grace. In my opinion, Christians are not doing a very good job of dispensing grace to the world, and we stumble especially in this field of faith and politics.     

 

Jesus did not let any institution interfere with his love for individuals. Jewish racial and religious policies forbade him to speak with a Samaritan woman, let alone one with a checkered moral background; Jesus selected one as a missionary. His disciples included a tax collector, viewed as a traitor by Israel, and also a Zealot, a member of the super-patriot party. He praised the countercultural John the Baptist. He met with Nicodemus, an observant Pharisee, and also with a Roman centurion.  He dined in the home of another Pharisee named Simon and also in the home of an ‘unclean’ man, Simon the Leper. For Jesus, the person was more important than any category or label.    ~Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, page 242   

No list would be complete without Republican Jesus, whose main goal is to see us conquer the world while failing our mission.   This Jesus only does town hall meetings in certain suburban zip codes.  His middle name is ‘Conservative.’   His primary agenda is to install a strigent nationalized religion and outlaw anyone who objects.  With this Jesus, those who are going hungry best get rid of any notions of being fed, no free meals with this Jesus—he’s more likely to charge you for one (and about his admonishments to feed the poor, he was just kidding with his disciples).  In the rare instance there happen to be any handouts, they are to be doled out to only the finest of characters who have fallen on hard times. 

Republican Jesus sports a Brooks Brothers tailored navy suit, a crisp white shirt with cuff links, a bright red striped tie, and shiny black wing tips.  He drives a dull medium blue sedan and his radio is ever tuned into the Rush Limbaugh Show.  His favorite soup is lobster bisque.  He can be found vacationing at the most exotic of destinations.    He has stock in many of the Fortune 500 companies (even if some of them just happen to exploit the poor or fund the murder of  unborn humans).  And lest I forget, Republican Jesus is president of the Nazareth Chamber of Commerce.  Republican Jesus promotes working as many hours as possible to attain bigger, better, and faster. This Jesus doesn’t bother to warn us of the dangers of living as if we will never die. All who follow this Jesus will have their reward in this life.  

36 Jesus answered,  ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’ 37 Then Pilate said to him, ‘So you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.’  -John 18:36-37, ESV

Notice Jesus didn’t say, ‘Only republicans listen to my voice.’   The real Jesus was loyal to his Father in Heaven, not to a political ideology.  And the real Jesus didn’t have a bumper sticker reading ‘Get a Job’ on the rear of his donkey (and speaking of riding a “donkey”, we can be certain he wasn’t republican).  Contrary to what my republican friends might believe, the biblical Jesus doesn’t exclude democrats from his inner-circle.

Before we start defining who is, and who isn’t a Christian—based on political leanings or affiliations—it might be helpful to bear in mind that Jesus wasn’t a card carrying member of any political party.

Ivory Tower Jesus

We’ve been looking at the unaltered, unadulterated, and unchanging Jesus.  We have enough challenges in following Jesus without being ignorant about who it is we worship.  This post continues the discussion about the Jesus presented in the scriptures to draw some clearer distinctions between the timeless Jesus of history and the pretend one we hear about much too often.  

Later when Jesus was eating supper at Matthew’s house with his close followers, a lot of disreputable characters came and joined them. When the Pharisees saw him keeping this kind of company, they had a fit, and lit into Jesus’ followers. “What kind of example is this from your Teacher, acting cozy with crooks and riffraff?”

Jesus, overhearing, shot back, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? Go figure out what this Scripture means: ‘I’m after mercy, not religion.’ I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”   -Matthew 9:10-13

Jesus is more likely to be seen out in the slums and projects than he is in the halls of power.

There is a picture of Jesus as this untouchable religious figure that we must confront.  I’ll call him Ivory Tower Jesus, he is too busy sipping grape juice with the religious zealots to ever leave their company and go to the ghetto where the reprobates and winebibbers reside.  This artificial Jesus condemns sinners regularly (John 3:16-18) and is ever casting stones their way until they get it right (John 8:1-11). 

Ivory Tower Jesus doesn’t have the time of day for losers. 

This common version of Jesus produces a band of paranoid, knit-picky, and drill sergeant types. Every single activity that doesn’t include bible memorization for these uptight kill-joys is questionable.  Nothing is permissible with this Jesus and freedom is not allowed. 

Ivory Tower Jesus really isn’t into reaching the poor, the damned, the ill-repute, and the downright disgusting. It’s all public relations.  When Jesus goes to the projects and hospitals it’s merely a staged event, a photo shoot.  Besides, Ivory Tower Jesus is too concerned with his personal privileges to to step out of his comfort zone (Mark 8:31-32).  Ivory Tower Jesus lives to be associated with all of the notables, respected, and revered—any notions of a Jesus who came for the forgotten and despised are put to rest with this version of Jesus.  Lawyers, car salesman, and anyone deemed shady are extremely uncomfortable around Ivory Tower Jesus and his high society cronies.

Scholar Dallas Willard wrote a few years back in his best seller and one of my favorites, The Divine Conspiracy:

Blessed are the physically repulsive,

Blessed are those who smell bad,

The twisted, misshappen, deformed,

The too big, too little, too loud,

The bald, the fat, and the old-

 

For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.

 

Then there are the “seriously” crushed ones: The flunk-outs and drop-outs and burned-outs. The broke and the broken. The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV positive and herpes-ridden. The brain-damaged, the incurably ill. The barren and the pregnant many-times or at the wrong time. The over-employed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled, shoved aside, the replaced. The parents with children living on the street, the children with parents not dying in the “rest” home. The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid. The emotionally starved or emotionally dead. And on and on and on.

 

Is it true that ‘Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal?’  It is true! That is precisely the gospel of heaven’s availability that comes to us through the Beatitudes. And you don’t have to wait until you’re dead. Jesus brings to all such people as these the present blessedness of the present kingdom—regardless of circumstances. The condition of life sought for by human beings through the ages is attained in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus.

 

Willard continues,Even the moral disasters will be received by God as they come to rely on Jesus, count on Him, and make Him their companion in His kingdom.  Murderers and child-molesters.  The brutal and the bigoted.  Drug lords and pornographers.  War criminals and sadists.  Terrorists.  The perverted and the filthy and the filthy rich.  The David Berkowitzs (“Son of Sam”), Jeffrey Dahmers, and Colonel Noriegas.  

Can’t we feel some sympathy for Jesus’ contemporaries, who huffed at him, ‘This man is cordial to sinners, and even eats with them!’ Sometimes I feel I don’t really want the kingdom to be open to such people. But it is. That is the heart of God. And, as Jonah learned from his experience preaching to those wretched Ninevites, we can’t shrink Him down to our size.  

Can’t add much to that.

Nice Guy Jesus

We’ve been looking at the unaltered, unadulterated, and unchanging Jesus.  We have enough challenges in following Jesus without being ignorant about who it is we worship.  This post continues the discussion about the Jesus presented in the scriptures to draw some clearer distinctions between the timeless Jesus of history and the pretend one we hear about much too often.  

Jesus, I found, bore little resemblance to the Mister Rogers figure I had met in Sunday School, and was remarkably unlike the person I had studied in Bible college. For one thing, he was far less tame. In my prior image, I realized, Jesus’ personality matched that of a Star Trek Vulcan: he remained calm, cool, and collected as he strode like a robot among excitable human beings on spaceship earth. That is not what I found portrayed in the Gospels and in the better films. Other people affected Jesus deeply: obstinacy frustrated him, self-righteousness infuriated him, simple faith thrilled him. Indeed, he seemed more emotional and spontaneous than the average person, not less. More passionate, not less.

The more I studied Jesus, the more difficult it became to pigeonhole him.  He said little about Roman occupation, the main topic of conversation among his countrymen, and yet took up a whip to drive petty profiteers from the Jewish temple.  He urged obedience to Mosaic law while acquiring the reputation of a lawbreaker.  He could be stabbed by sympathy for a stranger, yet turn on his best friend with the flinty rebuke, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’  He had uncompromising views on rich men and loose women, yet both types enjoyed his company.  -Philip Yancey, ‘The Jesus I Never Knew’, page 23 

Whether nice guys finish first or last is to be debated—but they are liked by just about everyone.  However, Jesus stated that there would be folks who’d hate us because of him.

I want to talk about a pretty common Jesus I hear about.  His name is Nice Guy Jesus.  It’s the Jesus who says ‘try your best to be nice to everyone and you’ll get into Heaven.’  He never demands we abandon our attempts to be good enough and simply trust him for what we can’t earn.  Everything is okay with Nice Guy Jesus, just groovy actually.  He is the consummate people pleaser.  His mantra is ‘live and let live, just don’t hurt anybody while you’re at it.’  This pretend Jesus forfeits truth in the name of tolerance and avoids confrontation like a plague.  He is calm, cool, and collected—a sort of no drama Jesus.

Nice Guy Jesus has no qualms with sin and its ravenous effects on those he loves and came to die for. 

Like Yancey, I grew up with my own ideas about Jesus.  The Jesus I heard about as a kid was one of two people: He was a cosmic hall monitor wearing a scowl or a mystical version of Mister Rogers on steroids—no offense to Fred Rogers, he was a decent man I am sure, but a wretched sinner nonetheless.

For me, Jesus was neither the Prince of Peace or the King Triumphant.  He was a policeman or a pathetic loser in my view.  Most of us don’t struggle with the hall monitor picture I mention as much as we do the mamby-pamby Jesus that typifies much of the preaching (where production hasn’t replaced the preaching of God’s Word by now)  you are likely to get at many seeker-happy churches on any given Sunday.  Nice Jesus is too busy to do any good because his finger is always up in the air trying to get a feel for which way the wind is blowing.  The real Jesus was no push over and he wasn’t moved an inch by opinion polls and surveys.

We have this twisted inclination to assume that Jesus was nice to everyone, as if his heavenly mission was to win some giant popularity contest.  But the real Jesus wasn’t quite so politically correct, he would have been much too controversial to be class president at many of our Christian centers of learning today. 

A couple years ago I was meeting with some men and this whole topic of being a ’nice Christian guy’ started to be discussed.  I must admit, pictures immediatly surfaced in my mind of some guys (more like manikins) I know who are so nice it’s enough to make me queasy just thinking about their niceness.  No where do we hear of Jesus instructing his followers to be nice guys.  C.S. Lewis wrote, We must not suppose that if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world. 

Now, my idea here isn’t to be harsh.  I do that without trying.  But Jesus never asked us to check our spine at the door.  To the contrary.  It is Jesus who gives us the courage to stand up to injustice.  Shouldn’t our passion be following Jesus versus being nice, and when necessary speaking the not so nice truth?  If we are perceived as nice so be it.  But sometimes being nice isn’t so nice when you think about it.  What’s so nice about ‘You and I are sinners through and through, and without Christ, we will spend eternity in Hell’?

Mercy and grace are not to be confused with nice.    I don’t picture Jesus being nice as he cleared the tables of the money changers who were making a mockery of God.  Sometimes I think we equate being soft-spoken and laid back with Christ-likeness.  

 42 “But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. 43 Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. 44 Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk over them without knowing it (Luke 11:42-44).”

Nice guys are too busy being nice to unapologetically call out those who do harm to others. 

Now, the real Jesus was no gun-slinging hard guy (sorry Driscoll, I love you, but Jesus was too classy to be into ‘ultimate fighting’).  But when the love of Christ compels you, you are going to get angry from time to time (Paul writes to the Ephesians, ‘In your anger do not sin’—not, ‘it’s a sin to be angry’).  Actually, it’s sin to not be outraged at the things that outrage God.  Of course there will always be the temptation to jump into the ditch on the other side of the road and paint Jesus as a rebel, someone who had no respect for authority and was always bucking the system.  But Jesus submitted to his Father in everything.  It was the religion of man he refused to be subject to.  

So, just as Jesus isn’t a clone of Mister Rogers, he’s no tame version of Jesse James either.

Rather than just another nice guy, Jesus is the lover of our souls.

Out of Touch Jesus

We’ve been looking at the unaltered, unadulterated, and unchanging Jesus.  We have enough challenges in following Jesus without being ignorant about who it is we worship.  This post continues the discussion about the Jesus presented in the scriptures in hopes to expose a whole host of myths and draw some clearer distinctions between the timeless Jesus of history and the pretend one we hear about much too often.     

…In response to this divine miracle of astonishment, man has produced an almost equally astonishing miracle.  As Jesus turned water into wine, we have turned wine back into water, turned the intoxicating wine of the gospel into a mushy grape jelly.  He came to light a fire, and we have found a way to water it down.  He came to shock us, and we have channeled the shock through lightning rods called churches, or rather churchiness.  He came to spread his good infection, and we havefound antidotes.  As the antidote for smallpox is cowpox, as the antidote for a strong infection is a weak infection of the same germs, a weak infection that elicits antibodies to fight the strong infection, so the antidote for potent religion is pallid religion; the antidote for Christ is ‘Christian stuff.’  The antidote for his noun is our adjective.

No book is more fascinating than the Bible.  And no books are less fascinating than our books about the Bible… Christ’s words roused his enemies to murder and his friends to martyrdom.  Our words reassure both sides and send them to sleep.  He put the world in a daze, we put it in a doze (Peter Kreeft, in Envoy Magazine, Jan-Feb. 2008).  

Thank you Peter Kreeft.  That is about as accurate of a diagnosis when assessing the sad state of affairs plaguing the modern day church here in the West that we might run across.  Our affair with affluence has rendered us useless and our apathy towards all things holy saps the little life which remains.  Christianity in many circles has been reduced to just another self-help prescription, or worse yet, a religious get rich scheme.  It’s no wonder so much that passes as evangelicalism is on life support, if the plug hasn’t been pulled already.  How much of what we consider to be ‘Christian’ is simply out of touch with who Christ is and the everlasting Kingdom reign he came to announce? 

And we can’t figure out why the world has such a propensity to think that Jesus is pretend and irrelevant.

As a youngster I was fascinated with the story concerning the country mouse and his cousin the city mouse.  The city mouse made a trek out to see his cousin to tell him about the pleasantries of city living and the easy life it afforded a mouse (cheese, fish and bread to hearts content).  The country mouse decided he ought to visit the city with very little persuasion.  If you know the tale you know how it ends.  The country mouse is greeted by a cat and it changes his entire perspective—”Cousin, I’m going back to the country! You never told me that a Cat lives here! Thank you, but I’ll take my humble crumbs in comfort over all of your finery with fear!”

When I was eight years old my parents packed up and rounded up my sister and I, the time had come to leave the hood.  We left the noisy life we had in Detroit for the peaceful life an hour away out in the backwoods.  Howell, Michigan, seemed as if it were the other side of the planet to me.  In the story of the two mice,  the city mouse thought that his cousin was clueless and that he had the short of the stick by living out in the sticks.  I had the same preconceived ideas as a young boy myself.  But it didn’t take long until I realized that the way I thought things were, were all backwards.  Growing up in the country was a dream come true.  It meant wide open spaces, frogs as numerous as mosquitoes, train tracks, sleep outs, backyard baseball, and tree forts fit for a king. 

I learned this lesson again a few years back by moving to Nashville, Tennessee.  As northerners, its been a tendency of ours since the Civil War to look at our neighbors to the south as rednecks (missing a few screws as well as some teeth).  As an adult, I had slipped into developing some of the same unfounded prejudices—and was I wrong.  One visit to Vanderbilt University was plenty enough in opening my eyes.

There are those who present Jesus as some kind of locust eating out of touch cave dweller; a lunatic from the wilderness if you will.  However, Jesus was up to speed with the times he lived in, he was in tune with where people were coming from, and it was Jesus who made it his mission to reach out and touch people rather than be an ‘untouchable’ as his religious critics were fond of being.  His manner of living and his teaching material, was to the Pharisees, much like what the country was to the city mouse—behind the times.

When the Pharisees, a money-obsessed bunch, heard him say these things, they rolled their eyes, dismissing him as hopelessly out of touch (Luke 16:14, The Message Bible)

Now, there are those today who think Jesus is out in right field because he’s not into playing religious games, he deals with the heart rather than mere appearances, he’s a nonconforming revolutionary, and he is known for stirring things up instead of letting things settle. 

You see, the problem isn’t that Jesus doesn’t connect with reality, it’s that we do more than our fair share in chasing off any who might be seeking the real Jesus by presenting a Jesus who is nothing more than another option on the religious smorgasbord.  We have carefully taken off the sharp edges as Kreeft argues.   

Take the offense of the Cross for instance.  We don’t do anyone any favors by preaching a Jesus who merely went to Calvary to make our lives ‘more meaningful’ (it is our lives that are meaningless without him to begin with).  No, Jesus went to a place called Calvary to right all wrongs, he went to deal a death blow to our pride, he went to conquer sin once and for all, he went to suffer the wrath of God in our place, and he went to serve every demon and the Devil himself their pink slips.     

Jesus came to tackle and solve man’s most severe needs; his overbearing problem with sin and his subsequent separation from God.  Any other Jesus than the Jesus who was pulverized and hung out to suffocate in the afternoon sun with nails as his comforters and thieves as his companions—in order to render these problems solved—is the only Jesus who is ’hopelessly out of touch.’