For & Against - Part 2.2
This comment from Jacob Mentzel was too good to be left in the comments.
What I see as endemic is the constant overpersonalization of the Gospel. Not that the Gospel isn't personal, but that everything gets translated into the subjective realm of how I feel about Jesus. And truth inevitably gets lost in the language. You see it all the time, year in and year out on college campus' (and don't forget that this is Lane's work!). Students come out of a church, find a Christian student organization, feel like they're a part of something they can relate to, and reject the Bride of Christ and so invariably reject Christ Himself. Everything becomes about "me and Jesus" and the next thing you know you have some 300 pound jock singing prom-songs to their boyfriend in the sky because they read that Jesus is the Bridegroom of the Church and he just has no frame of reference for it. So he reasons like this: "Jesus is a Bridegroom, I, me, I (since it's all about my personal relationship with Him) am the Bride (not the Church) and that must make me the woman in the relationship... so I should relate to Jesus like woman to her lover." No. It's Jesus and His Bride, the Church. And you get to be a part of it if you trust in Him. That's it. But no one is telling anyone that. Instead, they're propogating the lie.
Or students come to the university and find an assault on all things truly Christian and join up. This I think is really the key. The assault on all things truly Christian is pervasive. But the assault on "Jesus" isn't. Everybody wants Jesus on their side. The sodomites claim that he was in love with men- just look at the twelve disciples. The feminists claim he was a liberator- just look at how wonderful he was with the woman at the well and Mary and Martha! The environmentalists make him out to be a tree hugging hippie. The philosophers make him into a good moral teacher. Are any of these the true Jesus? Well, no. Sure, they may have some things right. Yeah, Jesus loves sinners. Yeah, Jesus loves women. Yeah, Jesus is for the environment- he made it. Yeah, Jesus was a good moral teacher. But they all miss the mark. Even Nietzsche liked Jesus, for crying out loud. But only "Jesus" as a concept that inevitably was made in his own image.
Since that's what everyone does with Jesus, it's really easy for a Christian to hide behind that. "I'm about Jesus." Nothing wrong with that. Which Jesus? The real one? Your "own personal Jesus?" That's fine. You be about your Jesus, I'll be about what I'm about, and we don't have to clash. Just keep your fundamentalist, proselytizing, condemning, harsh, conflict-causing, guilt-inflicting, wrath-threatening CHRISTIANITY out of my life. And if you're saying you're "just about Jesus" because you want to avoid the conflict that comes from being faithful to the Gospel, to try to avoid the fight that's going on around you, because darn it, then no one will like you, you're wrong. The truth is that for most people, saying you're just about Jesus is really saying, "On the one hand, I can't just DENY that I'm a Christian, but on the other I refuse to be associated with anything you may despise and therefore reject, so please don't hit me or call me names. After all, it's Jesus I'm about, and how can you not like him."
Or it's, "It's just me and my boyfriend, Jesus." And that's just wrong too.
