Glocal Christianity

Is Jesus the Christ?

This morning I was reading the Acts of the Apostles, reflecting on what it had to say about the good news and the practice of evangelism.

In the course of the book, the author recalls, "Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ."

Think about that. Stripped to its simplest form, the good news is nothing more and nothing less than the announcement that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is the Messiah. Whenever we call Jesus "Christ", whenever we call Jesus "Lord", we're evangelising.

This brings into very sharp focus the anti-Christian nature of any attempt to drive a wedge between Jesus and Christ. Whenever a distinction is drawn between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith" by secular historians, or between "Jesus of Nazareth" and the "Cosmic Christ" by Hindu gurus, therein lies another gospel, a counter Christian gospel.

Too often it is assumed this is too obvious. I wonder how that would affect our practice if most Christians were more deeply conscious of how less than obvious it is for many.

Jesus All About Life TV Commercial

The new Jesus All About Life TV commercial has been launched in Sydney. Pass it on and see what others think.

What do you think life's about?

With the Jesus All About Life campaign now underway in Sydney I thought I'd do a scan of what's happening online. In the process I stumbled across a conversation between Dominic Steel, senior minister of Christians in the Media, and Shane Rogerson, an old church buddy.

Dominic asks, "I have been struggling to think of the next 10 words that I want to say after the advertisement’s brilliant catchy statement: Jesus is all about life. But what are the next 10 words I am to say to my friends?"

Shane responds, "Its a great conversation starter. Everyone knows it won't seal the deal. My next 12 words: what do you think life's about? have you seriously looked at Jesus?"

Now, while I think there's a danger here in any suggestion we adopt formulaic responses, I do agree asking open-ended questions like that is not a bad way to engage with the sorts of questions the Jesus All About Life may stir up.

I think Shane's other comments deserve some attention too. We all know it is nothing more than a conversation starter, but I am not sure how many non-Christians realize that we realize that. 

So, I'd just like to throw this question out to everyone, Christian and non-Christian, religious and non-religious. What do you think life's about? Have you seriously looked at Jesus?

Is God mysogenistic?

From a conversation I had earlier: To whom did Christ appear first? Actions speak louder than words. In an age where the testimony of women was not trusted, the God we know through Christ entrusted the good news to women first. It was they who told the men. Is that the mark of a mysogenistic God?

The Secret Ways of Jesus

Why do you think Jesus told Jairus and others to say nothing to anyone about his healing activities? Why did he order the demonized to be silent? Why the secrecy? Was he a gnostic?

Many people indulge in all sorts of speculation about a messianic secret, but could this be unnecessary? Could it be that Jesus was just being humble?

Consider that Jesus also instructed his disciples to give in secret, to pray in secret and to fast in secret. Is it not more reasonable to interpret his healing in secret as a logical extension of this teaching?

What are the implications for bloggers?

Radical Attachment to Jesus

Radical attachment to Jesus is not believing something about Jesus (a pietistic experience), or believing in Jesus (a conversion experience) but believing Jesus (in discipleship) and believing what Jesus believed (in imitation). So, as he believed, love of God, love of neighbour, and becoming one’s true self are three indivisible sides of the primary spiritual triangle.

David Augsburger – Dissident Discipleship, P23

Christ beyond our imaginations

In the New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton observes:

"Every one of us forms an idea of Christ that is limited and incomplete. It is cut according to our own measure. We tend to create for ourselves a Christ in our own image, a projection of our own aspirations, desires and ideals. We find in him what we want to find. We make him not only the incarnation of God but also the incarnation of the things we and our society and our part of society happen to long for." 

"Therefore, although it is true that perfection consists of imitating Christ and reproducing him in our own lives, it is not enough merely to imitate the Christ we have in our imaginations." (p155-156)

Meditation on Christ, therefore, should include the deconstruction of our own pseudo-Christs. It reminds me of the Zen koan, "If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him." It speaks of our propensity to cast idols in our own image rather than let God be God.

Jesus: the true vine

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me."

- Jesus 

Jesus wasn't history

Christianity was born when an unnamed disciple looked into a tomb and saw that Jesus wasn't history. - Unknown

Warm Fuzzy Jesus

Since I have been pushing the boundaries these last few days I thought I'd relent, soften my image, and offer you all a warm fuzzy Jesus for once. These ones are made of orange felt. Want one? 

The trend we have in Jesus

I recently stumbled across an article by Bryan Patterson on "The trend we have in Jesus", which had a number of astute observations about Christianity and consumerism.

The pretext is the new political satire by Roland Merullo, American Savior. Here are a number of comments that stuck out for me:

Of course, the story is implausible but it does point to the problems popular culture has in dealing with serious spiritual subjects.

Not even Christian filmmakers have really managed to deal with serious spiritual themes.

In the beginning, Jesus was an outcast - misunderstood and punished for it. These days he is a pop culture icon; not so much an outcast, but still misunderstood.

Nichols surveyed popular Christian radio hits and concluded: "Like a good boyfriend, Jesus shows up at the right moment, says the right thing and knows how to hug."

Jesus never taught or believed in compromise. But many people are satisfied with a lukewarm, human Jesus who doesn't challenge them too much.

I would be interested in hearing your reflections:

• What's your thoughts on Christian consumerism and the consumer friendly Christ?

• Is the emerging-missional movement the answer, or has it even fueled Christian consumer faddishness?

• What do you think the way forward is?

Jesus in Every Breath

Stillness is worshipping God unceasingly and waiting on him. Let the remembrance of Jesus be present with your every breath. Then indeed you will appreciate the value of stillness…

John Climacus, The Hesychast

Pagan Christ's

Every now and then I come across Pagans invoking the "Pagan Christ's" of ancient mythology as an argument against the uniqueness of Jesus and his death and resurrection. It is interesting to note what C S Lewis had to say in response to this:

Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about “parallel” and “pagan christs”: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.¹

If my religion is erroneous, then occurrences of similar motifs in pagan stories are of course instances of the same or a similar error. But if my religion is true, then these stories may well be a preparation evangelica, a divine hinting in poetic and ritual form of the same central truth which was later focused and (so to speak) historicized in the Incarnation.²

Now as myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying God without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens – at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other is.³

¹C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 67 .

²Lewis, God in the Dock, p. 132.

³C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact,” in The Grand Miracle and Other Selected Essays on Theology and Ethics from God in The Dock, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: Ballantine, 1970), pp. 38-42 (41-42).

Deconstructing Jesus: Gnostic Myth and the End of Revelation

One of the ironies of contemporary spirituality is surely the popularity of the Gnostic gospels amongst those seeking a more human, down to earth Jesus, for the Jesus of the Gnostics is far more alien and inhuman than the Jesus of the New Testament.

Do I exaggerate?

Consider this flashback episode from The Acts of John:

.... Sometimes when I meant to touch him [Jesus], I met with a material and solid body; but at other times when I felt him, his substance was immaterial and incorporeal, as if it did not exist at all ... And I often wished, as I walked with him, to see his footprint, whether it appeared on the ground (for I saw him as it were raised up from the earth), and I never saw it. (§ 93)

The closest the New Testament gospels come to this are the transfiguration and walking on water accounts, neither of which affirm an immaterial Jesus. And even the appearance accounts (which are post- not pre- resurrection) don’t go as far.

So, contemporary interest in the Gnostic gospels has long been a puzzle for me. To be honest I wondered how much of the interest was due to ignorance about what the Gnostic gospels actual said.

But Epstein’s article on Post-Atheism has helped me clarify some of my thoughts. In essence I sense that what is happening is that the “obvious” mythological character of the Gnostic gospels creates a plausibility structure for treating the New Testament as “obviously” mythological as well. This facilitates not only the “demythologization” of Jesus for those who find the miraculous objectionable; it also facilitates alternative myth validation for those seeking a more “inclusive” and consumer friendly Jesus.

In such fashion, Jesus becomes a messenger without a message. He is stripped of his revelatory power and becomes, himself, the deepest of mysteries. Intellectual honesty requires us to profess agnosticism about the historical Jesus; assurance becomes heretical; God remains unknown; all that remains is Jesus the mythological mirror of the human soul.

Hindu Jesus

This picture, by Krista O'Connell, is called "Hindu Jesus". The artist writes:

"This is a Hindu reinterpretation of Jesus and His resurrection! He has five arms to represent openness and equality towards each of the four castes of India and the untouchables, as Christianity does not promote a dharmaic hierarchy. There are three circles represent unity, eternity, and the trinity."

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