Monday, November 19, 2007
Does Jesus Kick Ass?
I'm still plodding through John Stott’s “The Cross of Christ”. I didn’t think it would be easy but I didn’t want this to be a lesson in futility. I decided to do a little supplemental reading to get a more colorful approach to the same perspective. I turned to the more culturally relevant style of Mark Driscoll. Mark shares Stott’s view but he is always good for an entertaining presentation and he shows us what it might look like to live out this barbaric view of God. “The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World” is a collaboration of several fundamentalist authors dedicated to John Stott. You can read more of it online. In the section written by Driscoll, he contrasts his reformed view of Jesus that focuses heavily on the exaltation (divinity) of Jesus with the emergent view that focuses more heavily on the incarnation (humanity) of Jesus. He suggests a balance, but he feels the only valid reason for choosing Christ as Lord is Jesus' divinity. He also goes further to diminish our attempts to admire the beauty of Jesus’ humanity.
“Without a robust recognition of the corresponding deity of Jesus, the humanity of Jesus has the propensity to leave us with a marred false image of Jesus – little more than a limp-wristed, marginalized, hippie-esque, unemployed Galilean pacifist in a dress with feathered hair and open-toed sandals – a guy that the average man would be remiss to worship because he could beat up that Jesus.“The historical Jesus was not potent enough to suit some Christians so they invented their own version of Jesus. The biblical stories of divinity contain provocative literary imagery. This imagery was used to speak about the importance of Jesus through the culture of Greek and Roman theology (divine beings visiting and interacting with people on Earth). I agree with these ancient myth makers that Jesus is important, he causes the blind to see (reveals wisdom), he heals the sick (restores outcasts to community), and he is the son of God (he was expected to be the replacement for Caesar and king of the Jews). But, I don’t feel that being Christian has anything to do with confusing those symbolic stories with historic past or future events. The imagery of Jesus' violent return to earth was a result of revenge minded violent zealots. These zealots were clearly part of Jesus' following, but as far as I'm concerned, they were not speaking for Jesus. Unfortunately, this view of Jesus has become the dominant view among modern Evangelical Christians. I feel it was inevitable given the acceptance of violent atonement theology by people like John Stott.
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“Perhaps my favorite picture (and that of my young sons) of the glorious exaltation of our great God Jesus Christ is what we like to refer to as Ultimate Fighter Jesus. In Revelation 19:11-16, Jesus rides into town on a white horse, with his steely eyes blazing red like fire and a tattoo down his leg that says “King of kings and Lord of lords.” He is wearing white like a gunslinger from an old western and carrying a sword, looking for some bad guys as the blood of a ready-fallen enemies drips to the ground below. Simply, Jesus was, is, and forever will be fully God; he is not someone anyone would want to mess with.” - Mark Driscoll “The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World”
9 comments:
That's quite a title for this post. Made me click over.
Your last paragraph got me thinking, though. You say, "These zealots were clearly part of Jesus' following, but as far as I'm concerned, they were not speaking for Jesus." Are you including the John the apostle (and author of Revelation) as one of those zealots?
Or do you mean zealous interpretations of Revelation?
Mark,
If you take the position that the author of Revelation was intending for Jesus to literally come again and kill people who didn't accept him as messiah, then I would include those authors. However, if the book was meant to be a provocative critique of the then current Roman Empire and wasn't to be taken literally as what they were hoping would happen then I wouldn't include the authors. I guess I could go either way, but the point is the same. Any reference to violence and revenge would not have been consistent with Jesus' vision.
Do you have an opinion? I probably lean toward including some of the NT authors as part of the problem. They certainly didn't make it easy. Martin Luther had similar issues with Revelation and wanted it out of the Bible at one point.
You could make the case that Revelation was a work by someone stating their emotional response to 70 AD and it was meant to show how the Christian community felt at the moment not how we are to respond. It is common for artists to share their temporary emotional state in their art. There is no doubt that hatred of Rome (the beast) was a common response after the destruction of the temple and the torture of Christians and Jews long after that event.
So ... his favorite version of Jesus is the very one that his tradition says is the reason why the Jews rejected Jesus in the first place? I can't help but think if he were living 2,000 years ago, he'd find Jesus as a wanna-be Messiah, because that whole ultimate fighter Jesus thing was the very thing that Jesus was not -- hence the whole crucifixion.
Heh... I think Mark is going to be sooooo disappointed with Jesus when he finally meets him.
The phrase "Ultimate Fighter Jesus" makes me want to vomit.
Mike-- as a former English teacher speaking only for myself, I agree that people can be really dense when it comes to the way we read the Bible.
We are perfectly capable of reading Tolkein "literally" and not going away speculating about the details of some literal middle-earth culture. And yet we seem incapable of applying the same basic reading skills to Revelation or Psalms or Epistles.
I don't mean that the Bible contains fiction per se. But that some books of the Bible work as more or less factual documents (the eye witness accounts of the synoptic gospels). Other books don't seem to be factual at all. Whatever label we choose for Revelation, I don't think factual eye witness account is a good one.
That answers a lot of these issues for me. I think this issue of genre is what you meant by artists sharing emotional truth?
Great discussion!
Mark,
Yes, I agree the issue of genre is important. But I also think you have to consider the genre of "gospel". I'm not sure you can say that Gospel equals "eye witness account". Not even for the synoptics. For example, we got that word "Gospel" or "good tiddings" from secular culture. It was also used to make reference to the good news of the birth of Augustus Caesar (who already had a divine birth narrative and a divine ascention to the right hand of God). I wouldn't consider anything in any of the Biblical Gospels as "eye witness" given the fact that they were written decades after all the eye witnesses lived. Plus we can examime the language and style of writing in those stories and realize they are "mythical" in nature. Virgin birth, divine healings, resurrection, ascention into heaven are all pretty good signs that these were mythical narratives created to illustrate and magnify certain aspects of the historical Jesus.
Thanks for the discussion.
AWESOME BROTHER YOU SHOULD PLANT A CHURCH BROTHER, LIKE I AM PLANNING IN NEW YORK. WE ARE ON THE SAME PAGE
NYC Pastor,
Who are you? Thanks for the comments, but you should also know that typing in all caps is like YELLING AT PEOPLE!.
(although Driscol does make me want to scream)
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