At our Southside New Life Team gathering a couple nights, we reflected on a difficult reality of the Christmas season: misrepresenations of Jesus. At the time of year when America collectively celebrates something that at least has its origins in the birth of the Messiah, our nation’s misconceptions of Jesus become considerably more public. It results in things like this:
So instead of pointing the finger at those silly heathens in the media, we as a church community took time to confess our own misconceptions of Jesus to one another. And then we repented of them as we prayed and took communion together. So I want to ask you the same question:
Who is your false Jesus?
What’s his name? What’s he like? And how is he a distortion of the Son of Man portrayed in the Old & New Testaments? Please answer in the comments section. I love communal confession.
I’ll start out by confessing my own False Jesus. He looks something like this:
I think I believe in Celebrity Jesus. The one who is followed by the paparazzi, has really important things to do all the time, and doesn’t have time to take out of his day for the little guy. To be honest, I think I get this from the sort of online celebrity culture of the American church. We love to make celebrities out of great teachers like Rob Bell and Tim Keller, great leaders like Bill Hybels and Andy Stanley, great thinkers like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton, great preachers like Matt Chandler and John Piper, and prophetic voices like Shane Claiborne and Shane Hipps.
And since those guys can’t answer my emails or phone calls, I assume Jesus can’t either. It’s like I’ve begun to associate how spiritual someone is with how unavailable they are. It’s ridiculous, because Jesus drew crowds precisely because he took notice of the forgotten ones and had great compassion on them. I want to believe that more and more. Specifically, I want to believe it about me. Because even though I believe that most of those guys would stop to help a hurting person along the side of street, I tend to not believe they would ever take time to help me. I feel more invisible than the beggar.
It gets worse. I can get caught up in stuff like this too:
Like the Jesus of the video, I think I also believe in Party Trick Jesus. You know, the one who has all these really cool powers and tricks and puts them on display because he’s really sweet and he just can. The Jesus who didn’t suffer, didn’t hurt, and could just do what he wanted, when he wanted. Independent, do-what-I-want-cuz-I’m-awesome-like-that Jesus.
But the real Jesus was the Jesus who rejected party tricks in order to give revere his God (Matthew 4:1-11). He devoted time to spend alone with His heavenly Father before he preached (Mark 1:35-39) and made big decisions (Luke 6:12-16). He was fueled by love from Yahweh and perfectly obeyed him (John 15:10). He literally could not do anything in his own power (John 5:19-20). And finally he underwent supreme anguish because of his utter obedience and dependence on his divine life source (Luke 21:41-44). Jesus was far more needy, dependent and submissive than I give him credit for. I think I’d rather believe his life was easy because it serves as an escape from the pain and struggle in my own life.
And I think I’d rather believe he was a celebrity because it allows me an escape from my feelings of insignifcance. But all of that is crazy, because the beauty of Christ’s humility in taking on flesh is that he relates to all my junk (Hebrews 4:15). As a result, I an approach him in confidence knowing he hears and sees and understands (Hebrews 4:16), instead of playing my lame escapist games where I make up fantasy to Jesus as a convenient refuge from my struggle. God, forgive me for my idolatry.
Related posts:
I lol’d at the Jesus is cool video.
I’m studying on the 9th floor sans headphones, so I can’t enjoy all of those amazing videos. But it’s true! I see Jesus as the guy who came down to earth and did his thing because I’m messed up, and now that he’s done, he’s off in heaven somewhere having a party, maybe even waiting for me to come home. But in the meantime, he is basically unconnected from my day to day life – God is the big guy listening to me from up in heaven, right? I mean, the last time Jesus came down here to earth we killed him… I wouldn’t blame him for staying on the DL for a few thousand years. Fortunately the Bible says otherwise; sometimes I try to consider believing it.
Rom 8:34 – Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
Great post Mikey! Upon further reflection, I realized that I believe in “WHAT A NICE GUY!” Jesus at times. This is the Jesus who doesn’t throw things (Mark 11:15), and wouldn’t ever call someone Satan (Matthew 16:23). This is the Jesus that heals the sick and supports people. Sure it is true, but it also really isn’t. This interpretation of Jesus leads me to sometimes not do the right thing because I don’t think it would be nice and therefore Jesus wouldn’t do it.
I think we all see different parts of Jesus. It is like each of us sees an individual wavelength of the color spectrum refracted by a prism. All light has a corresponding equation with peaks and valleys. These features are canceled out or made bigger as you add up all the waves. I believe that, if all of these representations are combined, the parts that are wrong will cancel out and we will have Jesus. The problem is that the totality of His being is so rich, so immense, so radical that he cannot be pigeon-holed like most figures in history. Also, adding up waves is really really difficult.
I really liked that you identified this pigeon-holing of Jesus as idolatry. Idolatry is when we worship the symbol, the part itself instead of what it represents. So we worship the part of Jesus we see and not the real Jesus.
Perhaps we should also consider False Jesus such as, Mormon-Jesus, Judgment-Free Jesus, and Prom Date Jesus. I agree that we can get caught up into our false views of Christ, I don’t think heresy comes about from a willful desire to misrepresent Jesus, rather, when we exalt our own views above the text of Scripture.
Thanks so much for your honesty, Will and Lisa!
Ken, what about your own personal false Jesus? Was it the ones you mentioned or something different?
Same goes for you, Ben. I’d love to hear yours!
You would want to hear mine, Mikey
I like to think I have a handle on Jesus’ character, but in reality, I’m probably more lost on the issue than most. Most of you perceive him as some “X” Jesus–”Nice guy Jesus” or “celebrity Jesus”. I see all the X’s in Jesus’ character in a similar way, and struggle to pick out the ones that are true, and how much of each “X” actually contributes to his real character.
As a result, I sometimes have a hard time believing “nice guy” Jesus is there to comfort me in some difficult time, because perhaps he is being “angry” Jesus for something I did wrong. So given the seemingly complex character of Jesus, it is unclear to me how He is interacting with me in any given situation; and it is hard for me to believe that He is working in my life at all sometimes (after all, He is God, so how am I supposed to figure out what he’s up to?).
Hopefully that rambling of thoughts was somewhat coherent.