My longest post ever....

It amazes me the twists and turns Christianity and more specifically Christology has taken over the centuries.

It seems every generation wants to make Jesus’ words a little more about themselves and forget the historical context in which it was spoken and written. When you read Matthew 25 or Mark 13 or for that matter, the whole book of Revelation what do you think? You automatically think that these texts are about us, about our day or the future (no help from the awful theology of the Left Behind series) even though in the historical context Jesus was talking about the destruction of the Temple and the downfall of Jerusalem. We talk about who the beast will be, who the dragon is, who the “Anti-Christ” is (an idea never mentioned in Scripture by the way). And the problem is, we already know who all of those people were because they were people that were leading Rome and persecuting Christians. The early Christians were suffering at the hands of Rome and certainly couldn’t write a book that said, “Caesar is a false Lord, he is going to face destruction.” They would certainly of died for that, but they can say, “the beast will face God’s justice.”

We’ve made Jesus’ whole apocalyptic speeches about some future day when Jesus would “come down from the sky” and take us to a far away heaven even though it says in Scripture that we will be resurrected and live on a redeemed, new earth. And we talk of how people are going to go to a fiery hell for eternity if they did not believe the right things even though Jesus said that if you don’t follow the way of the Kingdom which is grace, peace, forgiveness, etc. then you will have to reap the consequences for your actions. In that day it would have been the Jewish people waiting for the Messiah to come and lead them in a battle over Rome where they would be free from the Roman rule and could reestablish Jerusalem. Jesus said that you can fight by the sword but there are going to be consequences which there were in the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem as they knew it. This is what N.T. Wright would call faith divorced from history.

How did we go from Jesus’ message to the Jewish community about living in the Kingdom of God to a message directly addressed to us about our individual, personal salvation in where we get to escape hell and go to heaven to live on clouds and play with harps? How did that happen to the message of Jesus as he said that the Kingdom of God is here, now and if you are not living in the Kingdom of God then you will face the natural consequences of not living with forgiveness, grace, etc.? It seems that over the last few centuries Christians have really taken some liberties with the message of Jesus. For what purpose? For power? Because of fear? For crowd control?

In the tradition I grew up in the whole point of Christianity was that you accept Jesus Christ in your heart as your personal Lord and Savior so you can have eternal life in heaven and avoid hell. And now that you are saved, it is time to go get others saved so they can avoid hell. And then for the rest of your life as you wait it out, you try to be as good as you can, attend as much church as possible, be involved in Bible studies, have a bumper sticker that lets others know your boss is a Jewish carpenter. Now that is not worst thing in the world, but it’s not even close to the whole message of Jesus. Jesus Christ obviously died so that we could have forgiveness of sins but individualism certainly has taken its toll on this message. Sunday after Sunday, youth group after youth group goes by where people are guilted into accepting Jesus out of fear of eternal hell. Is that really a good reason to take up Jesus’ challenge to follow him?

I think it’s time to start preaching the whole message of Jesus. Inviting people and welcoming people into the Kingdom of God, not through manipulation, or pulpit pounding, or guilt but through love, forgiveness, and the excitement of being part of something one earth that is greater than yourself. As N.T. Wright said well, “The Kingdom of God is not a place where God rules but the fact that God rules.

Shoot, I will just let N.T. Wright sum this up:

“Many have traditionally read Jesus’ saying about judgment either in terms of the postmortem condemnation of unbelievers or of the eventual destruction of the space-time world. The first-century context of the language in question, however, indicates otherwise. Jesus was warning his contemporaries that if they did not follow his way, the way of peace and forgiveness, the way of the cross, the way of being the light of the world, and if they persisted in their determination to fight a desperate holy war against Rome, then Rome would destroy them, city, temple, and all, and that this would be, not an unhappy accident showing that YHWH had simply forgotten to defend them, but the sign and the means of YHWH’s judgment against his rebellious people.

Jesus was a first-century Jewish prophet announcing the kingdom of God, believing that this kingdom was inaugurated with his own work, summoning others to join him in his kingdom movement, and warning of dire consequences for the nation, for Jerusalem, and for the temple, if his summons was ignored.”

Ok, N.T. Wright just said all of what I was trying to say in two paragraphs. I’m thankful for his scholarship.

I write all of this on the verge of going to C.I.Y. in Milligan (anyone else?). I am thankful for C.I.Y and what they have meant to many students over the years but I am also hesitant because I know what is coming. I am assured to hear some emotion driven and guilt filled messages about how all of the students need to accept Jesus into their hearts and then go back to their schools, get other people to accept Jesus into their hearts and then wait it out until they can die and go to heaven. That upsets me. I hope that it will be different this year, that someone will preach the kingdom of God and the exciting news that God lives and God rules and that we can be a part of that dream.