Throwing hand grenades at Jesus: He's gotta be in there somewhere

Dylan gave a very thoughtful response to my last post, and in many ways, she’s right. We can be pretty certain that Jesus really existed, that he was an itinerant prophet who said a fair amount of what his disciples said he did, and that he was crucified by the Romans – if for no other reason than the fact that if Matthew, et al were only spin doctors, they would have done a better job of sanding down some of Jesus’ rough edges. Also, spin doctors very rarely die for their candidate, and it would appear that most of the disciples did. She made a very good point that we’ve been overly conditioned to think that one of the characters in every parable has to be God, when that’s not necessarily the case. I read her take on the parable of the landowner, and I like her conclusions that it reflects the injustice of the times, and it’s about how violence begets more violence, etc.

Here’s the thing, though: I’m a tree-hugging, left-leaning, pacifism-espousing, non-profit-y type with a visceral distrust of authority. If I interpret Jesus as a power to the people rabble-rouser with an agenda of non-violent resistance, it seems a little too convenient. (I’ve never met you, Dylan, but if you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet you’re not a Republican and not a Baptist or Pentecostal.) I have a strong motivation to interpret Jesus as someone who agrees with my particular agenda – an agenda that has everything to do with my life experience and location in culture and history and practically nothing to do with Biblical interpretation.

It’s not that the history and culture and context of the original words aren’t important. They are, but the truth is that Christians can’t seem to figure out what Jesus means. Yes, Jesus was killed for posing a threat to the powers that be. The same could be said about Dr. Martin Luther King, but no one has ever tried to convince me that he died for my sins. (Although if I consider myself as having some sort of participation in the corporate sins of my people, maybe he did.)

Is it penal substitution, atonement, Christus Victor, the Cosmic Christ, teacher and prophet of inclusion, the Jesus seminar, or something else all the cool kids in seminary are talking about these days? The name of Jesus can be used to oppress or liberate or bore us. You can use Jesus to win an election or tell me who to vote for. Cuddle up to your personal Lord and Savior or put him on a T-shirt. What Would Jesus Do, God is Not a Republican (or a Democrat), and Who Would Jesus Bomb – pick the bumper sticker you like best, and then tell the rest of us we’ve got it wrong. Maybe it’s not about theology at all. Maybe we just don’t like each other, and we put it all on Jesus so we don’t have to take responsibility for that.

Maybe we’re exegeting the wrong damn thing, and we should turn our tools of interpretation upon ourselves, and ask a few questions about what we do with Jesus and why, because I know this: For me, the Bible is a completely different book than it was five years ago, and I believe in an almost entirely different sort of God. The words on the page didn’t change, and I’m assuming that the nature of Ultimate Reality didn’t either. I, on the other hand, have been through a massive and exceedingly uncomfortable transformation in that time, and my theological adjustments came out of the other changes in my life – not the other way round.

Increasingly, I don’t even know if I WANT it (Bible, Jesus, Christianity) all to hang together. (Maybe someday I’ll write something about the theological effects of PTSD and dissociation. I feel it’s a heretofore unexplored area of study.) I get nervous anytime that God or Jesus or the Bible gets too tidy. I don’t know if it’s even possible to arrive at definitive conclusions, so maybe we should all admit that even though there’s a real Jesus in there somewhere, he’s awfully hard to get to.

Comments

[Ellen]

Reading NT Wright has been helpful for me in thinking about this issue. He's a historian of 1st century Palestine who knows TONS about the culture of the time and has written a lot about how Jesus may have fit into it, how Jesus himself understood his mission, etc. The first time I read Wright it was kind of scary for me, but liberating at the same time. Perhaps you could pick up a few insights from him.

[Christy]

I keep hearing about N.T. Wright, and I'm sure he's a lovely, smart man, and maybe I'll read him eventually, but I think I'm more interested in the question of how Christians and Christianity, Inc. can look at the same information and construct such different, and even mutually exclusive, Jesuses and ecclesiastical systems accompanied with our belief that we (whoever your "we" may be) has got it right, and we know that for sure.

I guess it's this myth of theological objectivity that bugs me, of trying to find a definitive Jesus or theological system and then fitting everything into it, rather than spending some time figuring out who I am and what I'm about and where I'm starting from. More information is good, but there are ways in which it is impossible for us to really understand the context of 1st century Palestine, and I wish we did a better job of recognizing our limitations...

[Anna]

Christy,

I think you're on the right track by starting with experience. As humans with our limitations, that is really the only place we can start by my figuring. Even when we say we start with scripture, we're really starting from our experience reading it in our culture, in our context, with all our and our culture's history and baggage hanging around. And if we meet God somewhere, all we can tell is what we experienced. I don't even know if theology can be made out of that, because all our experiences are so different, but I'm not going to ignore what seems obvious to me to make some theology. I need to be real more than I need theology.

I am totally feeling where you are coming from lately and bless you for just putting it out there. It needs to be said.

Anna

[Ellen]

Yeah, reading NT Wright might not be the thing for you right now, I understand. One thing I love about him though is that he doesn't dabble in 1st C. Palestine like a senior pastor with a study full of commentaries. He's a trained historian, and he brings all the implements of his rigorous academic discipline to the table. I think that kind of thing frightens a few senior pastors, actually.

[hadashi]

i very much agree with Anna -- as a songwriter once said, you can only possess what you experience. or as that "i'm-not-a-theologian" C.S. Lewis said, paraphrased massively, theology is only a roadmap; if that's all there is, you don't get to take any cool trips to anywhere real. in any case, i am excited to read where this will be going as you're asking questions so many of us have but perhaps can't articulate. thank you.

[JJ]

That's just an awesome post. I am tempted to re-post the whole thing on my abandoned blog. It captures the essence of the one big problem that I find arising time and again in so many areas. And it's really the whole post-modern debate arising again, about who's story gets to describe reality. I believe in an ultimate reality, but accessing exactly what it is depends so much on who's doing the accessing. And no description of it is complete and final. And that should bring about an honest and humbling (and wonderful) uncertainty.

Whew, sorry, it would take so much more writing to make that make sense. And you are already doing such a good job of it. Carry on!