Jesus Christ "Superstar".....?

We have a lot of "Jesus Movements" today.  I put the preceding term in quotations because I am a bit skeptical about how Jesusesy(?) they really are.  In my typical way I have done in depth scientific research into the types of movements that are currently out there in the landscape today.  This is not necessarily an exhaustive list, but hopefully a good starting point...

Kum Bay Yah Jesus Movement:

This is a real popular one today.  This Jesus Movement is marked by lots of Social Justice stuff.  The Jesus you find here has a few clear characteristics;  Kind, gentle, non-judgemental, tolerant, just wants everyone to get along.....  Passages about hell and sin are generally jettisoned, ignored, or wildly re-interpreted due to how they create a lot of contradiction with the characteristics that this Jesus is known for. 

Within the Kum Bay Yah Jesus Movement there appears to be a low view of Scripture.  But, you can't say that, because their claim is that by reinterpreting the Orthodox historical understanding of things like sin and hell they are actually the ones with the high view.  The ambiguous concept of "love" is the driving theological framework for interpreting scripture.  The irony of this(which I can leave for another post to unpack) is that this newly defined "high" view of scripture requires us to accept that for 2000 years no one was ever capable of reading the Bible correctly.  The whole time God must have been so frustrated with all our mistakes, but, lo, a miracle occurred.  Modern professors and "theologians" finally arrived to set the record straight for God.  He must be so relieved!  I feel so bad for those uninformed bigots from 200 years ago because they are going straight to hell(if this movement believed in that.....)

Health and Wealth/Name it Claim it Jesus Movement

At least this movement gets things about sin right.  What do they get wrong.....This Jesus is a great buddy to have around.  His main purpose in your life at this moment is to make everything "Awesome!!!!"  Are you dying, pray.  Are you sick, pray.  Did another tribe just genocide nearly your entire people group....um...pray.....  And, if things don't work out in just the right way, you aren't praying enough, or have enough faith, or, have unrepented sin...probably related to not giving enough......

Even though Jesus died horrifically, and, Paul had a miserable experience, and pretty much every apostle died in unmentionably cruel ways...while generally being broke....This Jesus clearly says you are better than those Patriarchs of the Faith, because everything will be awesome. 

Can God heal, and bless, and do miracles in your life?  Of course!!!  But, pretty sure Jesus didn't come to Earth so your legs are the same length again....

Legalist Jesus Movement

This is the easiest Jesus to understand, and the hardest to combat.  Legalist Jesus is all about you cleaning up your act to prove your righteousness.  Which is really appealing to us in so many ways.  We like to see the goals and the hoops we need to achieve and jump through.  One, because it gives us a sense of personal self-worth when we accomplish it, and, two, it allows us to compare ourselves to other people...mostly how we are better than them.

This movement reads the Bible as a "how to" book on Self-Righteousness.  They like to sprinkle in a bit about Grace, and salvation by Faith, but in practice, its all in how you act.  It is a difficult challenge to address because it is hard to argue with the Bible saying, "Thou Shall Not".  Clearly you don't want to advocate for actively sinning, but it is hard to address what Grace really means.


The John 12:20-36 Jesus Movement

So how do we combat all of these false movements?  By seeing what Jesus said He was all about.  Throughout his ministry we keep getting this interesting refrain about it not being time yet.  And, then, in this passage, He says, "The Hour has Come".  Everything He was doing was simply a precursor to what His purpose and ministry was all about.  They were simple foreshadowings of the ultimate work and goal of Christ.

To Die.

To suffer.

To submit Himself fully to the will of the Father. 

To be the vessel by which God's justice, wrath and righteousness would be poured out upon.

To be the answer to our hopelessness. 

And answer not found in social justice movements, or healthier lifestyles and bigger houses, or, better ability to be self-righteous.  But an answer found in His death and His death alone.

The entirety of His ministry was to point people to the work of the Cross.  Did he heal, bless, love, serve?  Yes. But those acts were rooted in the promise of the Gospel.  Not as themselves alone having stand alone value.  The promise of the Gospel, the finished work on the Cross, is that God's covenantal promise with His people is that ALL things will be made new. 

A movement of Christians should be shaped, not by outward activities, but, by the purpose of Christ;  To die because of sin, for our sake.  And that is what leads to behaviors that foreshadow and give the foretaste to a desperate world what the Gospel is all about. 

If our message is not Christ Crucified, then we have no message.  And if we forget why Christ was crucified, we also have no message. 

What movement will you be a part of?

Jesus Loves You, But Not in the Way You Want

I really like my kids just the way they are.  I wouldn't want them to be anyone else.  Even their bad behavior is uniquely them, and, in its own way, precious to me.  The other day my son was mad at me and said he didn't want to live with me anymore.  When I asked where he would go he told me he was moving to Hawaii.  But he wasn't going to do that until he was grown up.  BUT once he was there I wasn't allowed to live with him, but I could visit at Christmas.  So, as punishment, my son was promising to move out when he was an adult(yayyyyy!!!), move to Hawaii(double yayyyy), and, let me visit for holidays(yippeeee). 

Precious.

My kids are unique, precious and loved by me just the way they are.  But they better not stay this way.  I refuse to be changing diapers for my daughter before she goes of to college.  I will lose it if my future 20 year old son pushes away his dinner plate and yells at his mother that her food is Guhstusting.  I love them right now, just the way they are, and I am working every day to see them grow and change. 

In the Gospel of John, chapter 12, we have the "Triumphant Entry" by Jesus into Jerusalem.  The whole town comes out to see the miracle warrior, the messiah!  Even Christ's enemies feel overwhelmed by his support with the masses and are at a loss of how to deal with it.  But a few days later these same crowds cry for his crucifixion. 

What happened?

Jesus didn't go along with their plans for themselves. 

For hundreds of years the Jewish people had not been a free nation.  Always a vassal state, never a State.  People like Herod were appointed as their local "kings" and their benevolent rulers taxed the daylights out of them.  This is not what the people wanted.  This is not who they believed themselves to be.  They were the children of the Abrahamic covenant.  Not a bunch of oppressed minorities. 

In the century leading up to Jesus' arrival there had been a number of self-proclaimed messiahs.  They would lead somewhat successful rebellions against the powers that be after gathering a large group of "believers/supporters".  It was easy to start a rebellion with the Jewish people.  They were nationalistic, jingoistic and fairly racist.  They had decided that their identity as God's chosen people meant that they were supposed to be the dominant nation and they should crush their enemies.  While they had spent a few hundred years with the short end of the stick, they were waiting for the day when the true messiah would come to them and throw off the shackles of their oppressors.

They, and only they, were righteous and good.  And all things from God were about them.  Their vision of the future is that they did everything right and they wanted God to come to them and make it easier for them to bask in their own greatness as His people.  There was no sense of maybe they had misunderstood the ultimate goal of the Abrahamic covenant, or, its eternal purpose.  It was all about them and only them. 

Jesus was the next great hope for realizing this goal.  He was going to come in and beat up those Romans and establish the Davidic line for all time.  What did Jesus do?  Rode in on a donkey, didn't start a revolution with the thousands canting for him, and peacefully allowed them to lead him off to his execution.  Jesus didn't play their game the way they wanted to play it.  And they hated him for it.

You and I are like this in so many ways.  We like our lives just the way they are.  We want to think, feel and behave just the way we always have.  And if someone challenges us they are intolerant, mean, jerks, etc.  And we want a Jesus who not only complies with this vision of ourselves, but we want Him to help bring it to pass.  The lie we believe is that we are basically just fine exactly as we are, we just need to spice the recipe up with a decent dose of Jesusness. 

Jesus comes in and says, "I love you just the way you are in this moment, but it is not the way you should be, and not the way that, with me, you can be".  We hate that.  Who does he think he is questioning my actions, my beliefs, my lifestyle?

Who does He think He is?......God

My kids are great and I love them in this very moment more than I thought it was possible to love someone.  But I love them too much to be the dad they demand that I be sometimes.  They will not eat candy for every meal.  They will not skip bed time and brushing their teeth.  They can't watch Breaking Bad before they are at least....I don't know....7... ?  Is that a good age for that...?

Are you ready to be loved in a real and life changing way?  Stop demanding that God love you on your terms.  Experience being loved on the terms of the only person who is actually capable of loving perfectly.  Mostly since He IS love.  And guess what, you are going to find out that a lot of what you want for yourself and want Him to do is going to not be what you get.....BECAUSE He does love you.

I've always been confused.  Since His head apparently was always glowing, how come they didn't know who he was???