What Has Happened to America’s Jesus?
By Brian on Feb 13, 2006
Intriguing column today in USA Today: “What Has Happened to America’s Jesus?” The author, Rob Borsellino, laments how America’s view of Jesus has changed:
…he’s been kidnapped by politicians and preachers who decide what he does and doesn’t think. They speak for him, and it doesn’t always make sense.
They say Jesus is “pro life,” but he doesn’t seem to have a problem with the death penalty. And he thinks stem cell research - something that would save lives - is no different from murdering babies. They say he’s the embodiment of kindness, love, decency and compassion. But he hates gays, lesbians and Muslims. And he’s not too crazy about Buddhists, Hindus and the rest. Jews? He can put up with them if he has to.
The Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka claims to speak for Jesus and goes around the country talking about how “AIDS cures fags.” Pat Robertson says it would be a good idea if the United States killed the president of Venezuela. It would be a lot cheaper than starting another war.
Borsellino is right about this change, and he’s right that much of it is for the worse. But he longs for the way Jesus used to be in America, and the way Borsellino says Jesus still is in Italy:
My cousin Maria made the sign of the cross before she ate. My cousin Antonio’s car had a figurine of a saint on the dashboard. My cousin Gian Marco had a beautiful cross hanging from his neck.
But nobody was going on about God, Jesus and religion.
And Borsellino is right that Jesus in America used to be that way. But where Borsellino longs for a return to Jesus-as-harmless-cultural-figure, I’m glad for the change. A safe Jesus isn’t Jesus at all. But instead of Jesus being hijacked by a political party or political viewpoint, we need to return to a dangerous Jesus who was disruptive, controversial, and the enemy of those in power because of he ate with “sinners”, because he forgave prostitutes, because he healed lepers, because he made plain the fraudulent nature of the religious and political establishments.
Technorati Tags: christianity, church, jesus
I am surprised that you didn’t point out the multiple “straw man” that the writer resurrected in order to knock down those opposed to his own political agenda. For example, his inability to recognize that the difference between being “pro-life” and against “the death penalty” is that innocent life vs. guilty criminal is a distinction. Similarly, to portray the wacko views of Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson as mainstream conservative Christian views is dishonest. Jesus doesn’t “hate gays, lesbians and Muslims,” and other than a few crack heads who the media gives homage to, you won’t find the writer’s straw man view of Jesus being purported by legitimate Christians, churches, or organizations.
The writer does bare his true antagonism to the Biblical Jesus by attacking Jesus’ exclusive claims to be the only way to God (John 14:6), and contrasting that to his personal view of “kindness, love, decency, and compassion.” In doing so he writes from ignorance, not understanding the true love of God, who came to earth (John 1:1,14) and lived as a perfect man in order to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Romans 5:8 says that God demonstrated His love for us because while we were sinners, He died for us. The fact that Buddha, Mohammad, or anyone else couldn’t do that, and thereby making Jesus the only way to be forgiven of sins, doesn’t make Jesus unloving. It only makes Him unacceptable to those who don’t want to recognize His way, and therefore want to continue to manufacture an idolatrous view of God and Jesus in their minds (2 Cor. 11:4).
Men can continue to distort the Biblical view of Jesus in order to justify believing the “Jesus” they construct in their minds, who allows them to continue in their choice sins. They will be eternally disappointed when their fictional Jesus isn’t the one to whom “every knee will bow” and the one to whom “every tongue will confess.” The Biblical Jesus is the one they will meet on that day, the Jesus who hates no one, but who laid down His life in order that we may have life…but who also says that “unless you repent you too will perish” (Luke 13:1-5).
God doesn’t need man to determine what He “does and doesn’t think.” He has revealed that to us in His Word already. What man needs to do is to submit to His revelation, and to accept what God says we must believe about Him and Jesus. Its not that man can’t, its that he won’t.
“I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.” John 8:24
Tony Rose | Feb 16, 2006 | Reply