How to choose your own personal Jesus
Over the new year's day, I had an interesting, though at times bizarre, interaction with a well-known church building leader in Australia (such are the wonders of the internet). This person had posted a graphic/meme like to the one here every bit a light-hearted New Year's resolution, and I added the comment:
—Tell people they are sinners who demand to repent.
—Perform astonishing miracles of healing and deliverance.
What followed was an odd substitution, where I was told that, by making an apparently serious critique of the list, I was demonstrating a lack of sense of humor, but this was followed by an evidently serious critique of 'Calvinists' and 'charismatics' for their flawed theology—to which I responded past suggesting that the person themselves lacked a sense of humour!
A few weeks later, someone posted this graphic on my timeline, and my impression is that, far from beingness something only humorous, this listing is taken by many every bit a serious clarification of Jesus' ministry building and a characterisation of the kind of person nosotros see in the gospels. This is just i example of the way that we find it like shooting fish in a barrel to trim off the parts of Jesus' ministry, personality and actions that we find uncomfortable, and in doing and then create a Jesus of our own choosing. I idea it would be fun to discover all the Jesuses in the gospels that look like the different groups of people nosotros meet in church and society.
Liberals: good news! Jesus is just like you! He criticises the Pharisees for being likewise religious, and imposing their religious expectations unfairly on others (Matt 23.iv). He appears to have a radical programme for social alter, in which the poor are rewarded and those unjustly imprisoned are released (Luke 4.18), and this is rooted in a long-term vision for the inversion of social roles in which the rich and powerful are humbled, and privilege is removed (Luke 1.52). Sentence volition be on the basis of whether we have offered practical aid to those in demand in the globe around the states (Luke 10.37, Matt 25.xl).
Pastors: expert news! Jesus is just similar you lot! When he sees the crowds coming to him, rather than being overwhelmed, he is moved with compassion (Matt 9.36, 14.xiv, Mark 6.34). Out of a crowd pressing effectually him, he is able to pick out a woman in need (Marker 5.30) and he postpones his other activity in social club to respond to her condition. He refuses to brand a show of his miracles, simply instead protects the dignity of those he ministers to by taking them out of the spotlight and treating them in individual (Mark 7.33) and bringing healing in their own home away from the crowds (Matt ix.25, Mark five.40).
Radicals:good news! Jesus is just like you! He but doesn't seem to care what people think of him (Mark 12.xiv) and he taught his followers to have a similar disregard for the opinions of those in say-so (Acts 4.19). He confronted those with privilege, and challenged their abuse of power fearlessly (Matt 23.16). He demonstrated his criticisms in dramatic symbolic deportment which all would run into and remember (John ii.15).
Introverts: practiced news! Jesus is just similar you! He experienced some of his most important moments of affirmation and testing in long periods of time spent on his ain, away from others (Luke 4.1–2), and made a regular addiction of spending time lone, abroad non only from the oversupply but fifty-fifty his closest friends, in order to be renewed and refreshed in silence (Mark one.35).
Catholics: adept news! Jesus is just like you! He was clearly an observant Jew, who was disciplined about going to church (synagogue, Matt 4.23) every week, and he observed the pilgrim festivals, with his family unit, like a good religious Jew (Luke ii.23, John 7.fourteen, 10.22). He clearly believed in the importance of symbolic action (Marker 7.33, John 9.seven), and engaged in communal rituals which he expected others to repeat (Luke 22.xix, Acts 2.46).
Mystics: good news! Jesus is merely like you! He engaged in some rather bizarre actions, spitting on mud and laying it on people'southward optics and ears instead of just praying (Mark 7.33), and doing obscure and apparently meaningless things similar writing in the sand whilst people watched, without offering any explanation (John 8.6). People often found his teaching puzzling and obscure (Mark 4.xiii) and sometimes downright offensive (John 6.61, Matt 13.57).
Calvinists: good news! Jesus is merely like you lot! His central bulletin was non that 'God loves you lot just equally you lot are' but that 'the kingdom of God is coming, bringing judgement, so you must repent or perish!' (Marker 1.15, Luke 13.3). He offered adept news, but that skillful news was that God offered a way out of the coming judgement to any who would reply. He emphasised the narrowness of the truthful mode of discipleship (Matt 7.13–14) and that, though many might like to follow him, in God'south sovereignty few are actually chosen (Matt 22.fourteen). He spent time with sinners—because he believed they were sick, and needed the medicine of repentance administered past their true spiritual doctor (Luke v.32). The invitation to follow him was an invitation to follow a hard path of self-discipline and self-sacrifice (Mark eight.34). He was more than happy to talk nigh judgement and the 'outer darkness' where people would, in agony, bitterly regret their decisions in life (Matt 8.12).
Charismatics: good news! Jesus is just similar you! He did not minister, teach or do anything miraculous until the Spirit had non only come on him (at his baptism) just come up on him 'with power' (Luke 4.14). Signs and wonders were integral to his ministry (Matt 11.v) and his followers clearly connected the same kind of miracles and healings (Acts 5.12).
Nationalists: adept news! Jesus is but like you! He was quite clear that the Jewish people were special in the sight of God, and he had come to minister to them alone (Matt fifteen.24). He was quite rude to outsiders who presumed to recall that they could share the privileges of God'due south called people (Marking 7.27).
Grumpy one-time men: good news! Jesus is but like you! He often was tired and hungry, and this made him rather confrontational with those he met (John 4.vi). He got fed up with the people he was teaching when they were slow to respond to what he said—and he wasn't afraid to tell them (Marker 9.nineteen). He even got fed up with his closest friends, and was frustrated past their failure to understand and trust him (Matt viii.26). When people made inappropriate requests, he was quite happy to insult them in the strongest terms (Mark seven.27).
Cease times speculators: good news! Jesus is just like yous! He expected an apocalyptic doomsday to come, in which nation would rise against nation and in that location would exist wars, famine and illness, all accompanied by cosmic signs of the sun being darkened and the moon turned to blood. And he appears to have expected his followers to read the signs of the times (Mark 13, Matt 24).
At one level, this is quite a fun exercise—just at some other it is deadly serious, and offers key insights into Jesus as he is depicted in the gospels, and our interpretation of him.
Offset, information technology is really quite startling to realise what a circuitous and multi-faceted character Jesus is. When I started writing this postal service, I was planning to offering only 4 different profiles. But the more I reflected, both on the complexity of Jesus and our tendencies to select what we desire to find, the more different aspects of his graphic symbol I noticed. I have here teased out 11 aspects of his personality and ministry, only I suspect it would be possible to add more. (Do offer your ain characterisations in the comments!)
Secondly, what is hit is the manner that this complication is really found in all iv gospels. We have a tendency to detect thedifferences between one gospel and the next, and thatcan be helpful in noticing the details, and seeing how each gospel is drawing out some detail theological priority in gild to highlight information technology, not to the lowest degree in the context of speaking to a business organization or an audience of interest. However, the danger with this is that nosotros miss what is mutual—and this is much more meaning and substantial than the differences. All these unlike aspects of Jesus are institute in all the gospels—and this demonstrates both that the gospel writers don't appear to endeavour and flatten out circuitous, even patently contradictory, aspects of Jesus, and that they all appear to exist writing about the same subject, even when they offering different emphases.
Thirdly, the varied evidence of the text explains why people find it and so easy to see the Jesus that they desire to—since there is a large amount of diverse material there. But y'all tin can only do this by reading very selectively, and in the terminate (every bit someone, I forget who, said), if we worship the Jesus of our ain choosing, we are not actually worshipping Jesus, we are worshipping our choices.
Fourthly, what this and then means, when we get into arguments virtually who Jesus was and what he taught, is that the respond is to go back to the text—and not just selected bits of the text, just the whole text and the whole delineation of who Jesus is in the gospels. I have observe this especially helpful in the current debates about 'inclusion' and sexuality and marriage. How did Jesus' inclusion' actually work, when he spent time with 'sinners' because he believed they were 'sick', and was happy to tell them so? What did Jesus in the gospels actually teach about marriage, sexuality and sexual ideals? These questions ofttimes accept usa back to the heart of the affair.
Fifthly, the trend to make Jesus in our own paradigm is a sign of declining biblical literacy both within and outside the church. And the actually worrying thing about the hereafter is that our ordained leaders are spending less and less time on studying scripture and how it is interpreted, in favour of doing more in context, learning about church growth and mission strategy. Is this really the right priority for the long-term health of the church, whose get-go task is to worship God as he has been revealed to u.s.a. in Jesus, and call others to do the same?
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