Thursday, April 24, 2008

The Popular vs. The Biblical Jesus

Popular religion often depicts Jesus as if he were a good-luck charm. He is the defender of each believer, the one who carries prayers and concerns to God. Jesus is seem as a protector, one who keeps bad things from happening to good people. The Jesus of popular religion was a divine intervention in history, unaffected by social, economic or political realities of his time.

On the other hand. Those who have studied the biblical records in depth tend to arrive at a very different understanding of Jesus. The contrasts are severe;

The popularized Jesus protects the person of faith from life’s overwhelming problems; the biblical Jesus leads the follower into conflict with the powers and principalities, a conflict that can lead to suffering or even death.


The popularized Jesus promises a blissful, eternal existence beyond the grave; the biblical Jesus focuses of the current world, encouraging a quality of present living that is worth preserving into an infinite future.

The popularized Jesus lifts the burden of our guilt from us, paying with his own blood the price for our sins demanded by God (or by Satan, or by both); the biblical Jesus adds to our burdens, insisting that people of faith carry crosses of their own.

The popularized Jesus insists that people worship him; the biblical Jesus asks that people follow him.

The popularized Jesus gives simple and inflexible answers to each of life’s perplexing problems; the biblical Jesus gives often cryptic teachings that modern followers must struggle to interpret for their own time and place.

The popularized Jesus is based almost entirely on the resurrected Christ, a spiritual presence that transcends time and place to become a protective, comforting companion for every age; the biblical Jesus was bound by time and place, a historic person who lived amid the complexities of daily life.

Popularized Christianity is, then. egocentric to the core. While it includes enough authentic references to the actual life and teachings of Jesus to make it seem real, it also contains large portions of superstition. Jesus, in this view, is an adult equivalent of the child’s invisible friend.


One of popular Christianity’s most frequently used hymns states:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and grief to bear….

The alternate view also stresses the presence of an eternal Christ, available to inspire us and put us in touch with our spiritual strengths. The resurrected Jesus promised that he would continue with his disciples, much as a dying mother promises to be a continuing influence in the lives of her children. This promise was given in answer to the problem of how to continue Jesus’ mission.

The living Jesus, then, will not hold our hand through life’s inevitable and often petty problems. Instead, the spirit of Jesus will inspire us to find the strength necessary to encounter the excruciating pains that accompany life. A hymn popular among the progressive Christians states:

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

For the living of these days.

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