He does not show any emotion, looking like his face transcends any human feeling or passion at all, perfectly serene. He pays his taxes, is generally nice to people (except for those he doesn't like, people who are different and the gays [those sinners!]), is very moderate and stays comfortably in the middle. He thinks that following him on some things cuts it and is willing to look the other direction when we do not obey what he has said.
This is the Jesus we create in our imaginations, and this is the Jesus that many of us want to follow. We hear 1 John 2:6, "Whoever claims to be in Him must walk as Jesus did," and get uncomfortable. To fix our lack of comfort, we look to our imaginary Jesus and remind ourselves that compared to him, we're doing pretty good in life! We look around at other Christians (whether they are actually people who follow Christ or if they just label themselves as Christians and do their own thing) and think that we are doing pretty good. Brothers and sisters, this should not be!
I just finished reading Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos (phenomenal book by the way, and even better author, he's my favorite and I recommend all his work). He brings about our twisting of Jesus in our own image in a amusing but shocking way, and shows the true idolatry of it. We tend to take characteristics of Jesus and run with them, creating them in our own image so that we get Political Power Jesus, Passive Jesus and the like.
I am completely guilty of this. Looking up from reading in the Book of Mark last week, I looked up from my Bible startled. Was I actually finding the life of Jesus...boring?? I set my Bible down for a few minutes and thought about it, and I realized the reason stemmed from me reading the story of the man I described at the beginning of this post, not Jesus himself. Shortly after, I penned the following paragraph...
"I just realized how much I've limited Jesus to my brain. Some pale guy who was calm and tame. NO! Jesus was Jewish, zealous and passionate! He deeply and vigorously cared for the people he loved, and was so very in love with the other members of the Trinity and the things of the Kingdom and it was evident. He was a story-teller to all, captivating to all."
Although that small paragraph is not nearly enough to capture the true Jesus, it shows the spill of my heart realizing how beyond my wildest dreams Jesus actually is! So all of this post has led to my simple challenge for you. Open your Bible to the Gospels, and read it keeping the real Jesus in mind. The Jesus that had real emotions, real passions, loved boldly and was completely radical. Let this change your perspective.
