The more I hang around other people who claim to believe in Jesus; the more I read the stuff they write and hear the things they say, the more I realize just how personal Jesus really is.
Not personal, as in “He knows me better than I know myself”, but in the way that He seems to take on a completely different form, depending on who’s doing the talking.
To a Believer whose passions are ecology and animal rights; Jesus is a tree-hugging, composting, recycling hippie, who wants everybody in communes and homemade clothes.
To one who’s a Right-leaning, Upper Middle Class, gun advocate, Jesus is a capitalist, military-building, America-loving, small government soldier.
To the Left-leaning, urban Liberal Arts college freshman, He’s an infinitely tolerant, sexual permissive, “anything goes” God, who’s cool with everybody.
To the MMA lover, Jesus is a bicep-brandishing, butt-kicking tough guy, who’s down with violence when it’s necessary and/or mildly entertaining.
To the suburban megachurch pastor, He’s a supernatural Santa Claus, who wants everyone to happy, and to be blessed with nice things and big houses.
I’m admittedly exaggerating wildly here, with terribly broadly painted generalizations, but you get the point: Same supposed Jesus, just with a completely different agenda and set of priorities.
We have each created a customized, personalized, individualized version of the Son of God, and every one of us is absolutely convinced, that the real Jesus Christ, is ours.
Every Christian has blind spots; places our politics, pasts, and preferences encroach on reality and begin to renovate Jesus; chipping away all the stuff that makes us the least bit uncomfortable, and adding all the stuff we’re OK with.
If we’re not careful, we can all spend years following Christ, only to arrive at the dangerous, destructive delusion, that he’s pretty much just like us.
And while we can all agree, that’s a rather lame spiritual goal, it’s also a fairly understandable one.
If I can craft a Savior in my own image, then my walk with Jesus, becomes a walk in the park. I can remove any distinction and distance, between my agenda and the Almighty’s.
Then, what could be the bold, wildly selfless prayer of, “Thy will be done”, becomes simply the self-serving, ego-inflating, “My will be done”.
In that cozy little head space, my enemies become the enemies of God, my friends; the religious insiders, and my causes; the Kingdom causes.
Yet if Jesus is God, then he was also a historical man; a specific, actual, fixed being who walked the planet; who did, thought, and said specific, actual, fixed things while here.
We who want to wear the name “Christian”, are forced to wrestle with all of that, and to face the annoying, abrasive, unsettling totality of Jesus, instead of trying to conveniently customize him like an iPhone case, or a beach-side, airbrushed t-shirt.
We can’t simply use Him to accessorize our own religious aspirations anymore.
So how do we uncover the “realest” version of Jesus?
What do we do, as we try to find and follow a Savior, who it turns out isn’t as easy to manipulate as we would like?
I think it begins with each of us admitting that our blind spots do exist, and acknowledging that we don’t own the entire truth of Jesus. Not one of us.
Not our favorite pastor, or blogger, or denomination, or political party, either.
As we do that, we each embrace the blessed assurance, that in many ways, (even in ways we feel very deeply), we may just have Jesus wrong.
We also take a daily, brutally honest look in the mirror, and seek to see the stuff that’s the hardest for any of us to see; namely the way our worship of Jesus, has actually become a self-reflecting faith.
Keep going, Christian.
Keep reaching for Jesus.
Study, learn, pray, question, and seek Him.
Just hold Him loosely, knowing that we’ll never fully grasp all of Him, while we’re here.
