Sunday, November 07, 2004
Your own, political Jesus.
John at Subvergence recently quoted some of Donald Miller's new book.
One particular quote stood out to me for further conversation...
Pg 146 - "At the same time, however, we are at a disadvantage because the Jesus that exists in our minds is hardly the real Jesus. The Jesus on CNN, the Jesus in our books and in our movies, the Jesus that is a collection of evangelical personalities, is often a Jesus of the suburbs, a Jesus who wants you to be a better yuppie, a Jesus who is extremely political and supports a specific party, a Jesus who declared a kind of culture war in the name of our children, a Jesus who worked through the founding fathers to begin America, a Jesus who dresses very well, speaks perfect English, has three points that fulfill any number of promises and wants you and me to be, above all, comfortable. Is this the real Jesus?"
I've heard this conversation before, among both disenheartened Christian and non-Christian circles. I often think that there is no wonder to why Jesus is rejected by so many in the western world. And then there are those who try and follow the life and teachings of Jesus only to be oppressed by the larger celebrity Jesus of Churchianity. It's growing more and more difficult to identify one's self with Jesus these days, and not immediantly be labeled a self-righteous bigot. This is not the Jesus I follow.
Dale and Eric both pointed me to an article in the last few days that put my feelings about this into words better than I think I ever could. Though the author and I view Jesus in a slightly different light, his feelings on the matter are very well coincident. To quote:
So I am no longer a christian but just a person who continues trying to follow the example of Christ. I'll let him call me what he wants when I see him face to face. Until then, I will pray that someday people like me will be able to reclaim the meaning of Christ's identity, and the world will see the effects of the radical message of Christ's love--the perfect love that casts out fear.
You can read the whole article here.
