I’ve been meaning to link this post forever. J. Dodson at Church Planting Novice (a title I thought about stealing for this blog) looks at the episode where Jesus deals with a demon possessed man, and asks what we can learn about Christ. Great thoughts, and here’s an excerpt from his conclusions:
The Masculinity of Jesus: Jesus was radical but not because he was Van Helsing–vanquishing only evil and preserving good. Jesus conquered evil through counter-cultural redemption. In an age of emasculated, Fight Club, Ultimate Fighting voyerism, men do well to learn from the actions of Jesus. His masculinity was shaped, not by violent outbursts or the destruction of weird and wicked foes, but by mercy and redemption. He encountered the evil and suffering of this world with otherworldly wisdom and bold compassion. Is your Jesus this kind of manly?
Sometimes we can make lists of profound truths as if the Lists, not the Truths, have gained the upper hand. “Five Shocking Facts About Tap Water.” “Five Amazing Loopholes in the IRS.” “Five Profound Truths About God.”
These truths are profound, it’s true. But the medium doesn’t fit. Like we all know, the medium always has an effect on the absorption of the message, and maybe this is never more true than when the message centers on reality of the highest order.
If these “truths” are really profound, why do we have to encounter them in a grocery list format? And why the awkward labels, as if we’re afraid our audience might overlook the fact that these truths are deeply transformative if we don’t overtly spell it out?
Wouldn’t it be better to call gospel truths “little known facts” and let them speak for themselves? Otherwise, we run the risk of resorting to quick labels but then failing to substantiate our claims. I often think that we resort to mere labeling because our communication gifts and creative abilities just aren’t up to the task of describing infinite glory. They never are.
But instead of failing to try, maybe we should put all our puny energies into illustrating and explaining in order to hold up one little mirror to divine reality–rather than merely saying, “This is amazing,” and leaving it at that.
I guess this is a case of show, don’t tell. Many of us know that Jesus is profound and all-satisfying and a genius to boot, but few of us have seen it with life-changing clarity and none of us see it all the time. So people who talk about God shouldn’t just toss around superlative adjectives. Sometimes, an adjective is just the slave of a lazy imagination.
We don’t need to be told again that God is a remarkable being and worthy of our worship. We need to taste and see for ourselves. Hearts and imaginations need to be engaged, not just list-making and test-taking skills.
Repeatedly, my hands arch themselves over the keyboard while one knee props open Acts for Everyone. I pause momentarily, as if to fight the impulse that has overtaken me. Then, my fingers start slow-dancing over the keyboard. It’s as if I can’t help myself:
One of the great arts of Christian theology is to know how to tell the story: the story of the Old Testament, the story of Jesus as both the climax of the Old Testament and the foundation of all that was to come (not, in other words, a random collection of useful preaching material with some extraordinary and ’saving’ events tacked on the end), and the story of the church from the first days until now. - N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone Part One
This comes from N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone Part One, but it reads like a paragraph out of a novel. A historically-true, gospel-centered, heart-thumping novel that reflects the kind of “education” a seminary grad can only pray for and aspire to.
Peter and John had a secret–a secret that enabled them to run rings round the book-learning of the authorities. They had been with Jesus. They had been with him night and day. They had seen and heard him pray. They knew how he read the scriptures, in his fresh, creative way, drawing out their inner message and finding his own vocation in the middle of it.
Now that he had died and had then been astonishingly raised, and had then been exalted into the heavenly realm, all Peter and John had to do to explain what they were about was to develop the lines of thought they had heard him use over and over again.
This didn’t just give them “boldness” in the sense of courage to stand up and say what they thought. Sometimes people can be bold even when they’re muddled. It gave them something more: a clarity, a sharp edge, a definite point at which to stand. And the authorities knew it.
My newest scheme is to read through Acts, which aside from being one of my favorite books of the Bible, is a great “church planting” book. I’m going to attempt to follow along in a couple commentaries as well: Ajith Fernando’s Acts and N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone (Parts 1 and 2). Here’s a great bit by N.T. Wright on the resurrection:
‘Heaven’ may well be our temporary home, after this present life; but the whole new world, united and transformed, is our eventual destination. Part of the point about Jesus’ resurrection is that it was the beginning of precisely that astonishing and world-shattering renewal. It wasn’t just that he happened to be alive again, as though by some quirk of previously unsuspected ‘nature,’ or by some extraordinary ‘miracle‘ in which God did the impossible just to show how powerful he was, death suddenly worked backwards in his particular case.
It was, rather, that because on the cross he had indeed dealt with the main force of evil, decay and death itself, the creative power of God, no longer thwarted as it had been by human rebellion, could at last burst forth and produce the beginning, the pilot project, of that joined-up heaven-and-earth reality which is God’s plan for the whole world.
Great point that the resurrection wasn’t merely a signature miracle. No, it’s our first and foremost example of what God does when “given” a free hand, unchecked by sin. The resurrection is what redemption looks like when the defenders have been left in the dust and there’s an open court in front of it (bear with me, it’s March). Eventually we’ll all experience this.
