Wednesday, April 23, 2014
A Pretend Jesus
I am guessing you've heard of Jack and the Beanstalk, Paul
Bunyan, Santa Claus and Superman. I am
hoping you know they were not real. They
were inventions, as were Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Cat Woman. Perhaps
these imaginary heroes serve a purpose in our lives, but they do not ever truly
intersect with reality. They are a part of the pretend world. Pretending is
something we do to escape reality. Pretending
helps us feel better about ourselves - for a few minutes. But we dare not live
there.
Unfortunately, in order to make sense of life, we can fall
into the trap of inventing gods and religion.
Man-made religion may feel good, but it does not do us any good. A side effect of this tendency is that many
people have been introduced to an unauthentic version of God and His
principles, so they believe in God the same way they believe in Santa Claus or
Cinderella. Since they never encounter
the real Jesus, real miracles or real power, they can understandably become
completely disenchanted with anything that has to do with God.
The problem starts with our willingness to define God in
our image. In his book "Jesus", Chuck Swindoll put it this way,
"Interpretations of Jesus are fraught with bias. He's a powerful figure that people want on
their side, and they are willing to recreate Him in their image to enlist his
support... Frankly, it's hard to escape the feeling that our culture has taken
Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?" and changed it to,
"who do you want me to be?"
Jesus was not and is not pretend. It is dangerous to make up a Jesus
that suits our fancy; that kind of theology essentially reduces Him to a fairy
tale character. Life demands the real
deal. Jesus didn't come
to the real world only to have us use Him as an ally by making up our own
version of Him. Jesus came into a real
world to lead us to a real relationship with Him. He was born into real
poverty. He was raised in real
obscurity. He was an real carpenter who could
talk shop with guys in flannel shirts and work boots. He encountered real
opposition from politicians and professional theologians. He was really abused and illegally executed.
But in the face of all of that He demonstrated His love and power and changed
history for all time.
Jesus
didn't just talk about love, power and goodness. He didn't just theorize and sermonize. He
healed the sick, raised the dead and laid down his life for those who will stop
pretending and get honest with Him. He
gave us a faith that can handle unfairness, adversity and disappointment.
If
you are in a difficult time - if life has been particularly brutal to you - you
don't need a pretend hero or an invented theology, you need the real Jesus. Seek out a church where they believe in a
real God who truly came and lived among us.
Find someplace where they still believe in forgiveness, integrity,
honesty, and morality. Worship with
folks who still commit everything to God and who still see the same kinds of
miracles that Jesus performed while on earth.
Life is too harsh to try to navigate it with a pretend version of Jesus,
we need the real thing!
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