By: Curt Williams
Clearly, the favor that was once bestowed upon Christianity in America has mostly dissipated. You may not agree, but I believe that it was squandered. The moral high ground was abandoned by the corporate-style American church as fraudulent television preachers were touted and the exposure of sin in ministers was covered up. For too long, we have been about building our little kingdoms at the expense of The Kingdom. Our focus was on not selling booze on Sundays, saying no to fun, and publicly condemning that which so many of us participated in privately. Now the tide has turned.
As a result, today many people are not hesitant to mock, ridicule, belittle and even blaspheme the name of Jesus. His name is mentioned more in vain than in worship. This has given rise to many who now claim to be agnostic or are openly hostile to the Name that is above every name.
But my question to them is this: What is your problem with Jesus? For just a minute, forget about the dysfunctional churches, the bitterly laughable television “evangelists” and the moral failures of so many ministers, priests and lay leaders. For the consideration of the above question, let’s lay aside the division we display, the obsession with prime real estate or our failure to practice true religion. Can we just examine Jesus and find out where you may be offended by Him?
What is it about the historical Jesus that so offends you, outside of his messed up kids?
Are you offended that He was prone to deflect attention and seek out the marginalized? Are you angry that He made the blind see, the deaf hear and the lame dance? That from jugs of water He made top shelf wine? Or is it that, in direct disobedience to the religious rules of the day, He laid hands on “unclean” lepers?
Maybe you’re thinking that he was one of the religious. Nope. He called out the religious. In fact, Jesus reserved some of His most scathing rebukes for the elite and disconnected religious men of His day. He had no time and gave no credibility to their empty pomp and shallow rituals. He discredited them to their faces and risked everything to expose their hypocrisy, while pouring loads of compassion on the broken, the poor and the outcast.
Are you upset that Jesus claimed to be deity? Well, you might be on to something there, because He did. This is where so many are wrong. They want to opine that Jesus was not actually God in flesh, but he was simply a great teacher and prophet. That will not hold water though, as the claims that Jesus made would demand that we fit Him into the category of a madman, a liar, a fraud…or He was in fact God incarnate.
So please, do not reject Jesus because so many of us who claim to follow Him do so in such a poor manner, or that we reflect His character in such bizarre ways. Do not reject Him because you are offended by the American church, money-grubbing preachers, or weak depictions of His nature. Either accept Him as God-made-flesh, or reject Him because you simply choose not to believe. Just don’t blame Jesus for people like me, who are bumbling and fumbling our way towards Him.
He’s so much better than who we portray Him to be.
