A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [59]
In Revelation, Jesus is a prize-fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is the guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.
What would cause this articulate and highly committed Christian to portray Jesus as a prize-fighter, armed with a sword, intent on harming, killing, inflicting violence, drawing blood?
By now, I hope you can anticipate my three-part answer. First, this fellow appears to be firmly lodged within the Greco-Roman narrative, with all its style and swagger. Second, he seems to be working from a constitutional approach to the Bible, which privileges him to pass judgment as if he were a Supreme Court justice. And third, the view of God that he derives from those two sources causes him to interpret Jesus in a radically different way than many of us can accept—since we’ve lost faith in the constitutional and Greco-Roman paradigms.
A scene in the lowbrow 2006 comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby captures the problem we face. Racing legend Ricky Bobby gathers his family—plus his father-in-law and best friend, Carl—around the table and says grace for the food. “Dear Lord Baby Jesus,” he begins, “or as our brothers to the south call you, Hey-Zeus, we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest of Domino’s, KFC, and the always delicious Taco Bell.” He continues praying to “Dear Lord Baby Jesus” and “Dear Tiny Infant Jesus,” thanking him for “my family, my beautiful two sons, Walker and Texas Ranger, …and of course my red-hot, smokin’ wife.” Ricky Bobby continues to pray, asking the Lord to use his “baby Jesus powers” to heal his father-in-law. Finally his wife interrupts: “You know, Sweetie, Jesus did grow up. You don’t always have to call him Baby. It’s a bit odd and off-puttin’ to pray to a baby.”
Ricky Bobby replies: “Well, look, I like the Christmas Jesus best. When you say grace, you can say it to grown-up Jesus or teenage Jesus or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.” At this point, Carl pipes in with his preferences: “I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-shirt, ’cause it says like, ‘I want to be formal, but I’m here to party too.’ ’Cause I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.” Then one of the boys says he likes to think of Jesus as “a ninja fighting off evil samurai,” and Carl adds, “I like to picture Jesus with angel wings. And he’s singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I’m in the front row hammered drunk.”
Ricky Bobby returns to his prayer: “Dear eight-pound, six-ounce newborn infant Jesus, you don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant and so cuddly—but still omnipotent. We just thank you for all the races I’ve won and the $21.2 million—Woo! Love that money!—that I’ve accrued over this past season.”2
However ridiculous—or tasteless—the scene may be, it mirrors as only satire can a sad reality of church history and of today’s religious landscape. We all are tempted to remake Jesus into just about anything we like. We like a Jesus who (as author Annie Lamott has said) hates the people we hate and likes whatever we like—whether that’s partying (like Carl), fighting (like the son), a certain kind of politics (either left or right), or “cuddly omnipotence” (like Ricky Bobby). At least Ricky Bobby seems somewhat aware of what he’s doing, choosing the image he “likes best.” In contrast, too many of us, whether as individuals or groups, honestly—and naively—believe our view is “objective” and “true,” with no distortion at all.
Among those who become more self-aware about the danger of distortion, an understandable fear arises: if all of us (not just “all of them”) are tempted to remake Jesus in our own image, then we should be extremely cautious about compromising, letting Jesus be reimaged according to contemporary tastes. Thoughtful readers have probably already anticipated a problem with this otherwise well-founded caution. By holding a presumptive hostility to new views of Jesus, which may indeed reflect