“One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ.” –Luther
And Jesus said to the masses, “Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden…and be introduced to my list of rules.” (Matthew 11.28)
This is the Gospel in modern day America or at least in the conservative South.
Long have we left behind a love for the Word of God, and its many revelatory moments, and shortly have we embraced a Gospel of “do this” and “do that” if you want to be Christian.
Tragically, we may have never even heard the word of God because we have been too busy hearing our own words as the Word of God.
It’s funny actually…thinking we are reading words that tell us God’s Word and only seeing ourselves. Silly humans who think they believe in Jesus when they really just believe in themselves.
As a kid I grew up in a very conservative bible believing Church. I was weaned on sermons of the Premillenial Return of Jesus, a church full of backsliding Christians, and mandatory monthly salvation experiences because the sanctification we failed to fully receive last month didn’t quite stick.
The hermeneutic that was employed was largely a very literal reading of the Bible.
The dictum, “the bible says, I believe it, that settles it” would have fit in well.
Far be it from many of them that the bible only says what it says because they were reading it from a particular historical and ideological bend. I digress.
Even in this setting, it was never blatantly stated, “Come and receive Jesus into your heart and then receive his rules to make sure he stays in your heart.”
This wasn’t spoken, but this was the assumption.
People were not “saved” to freedom. They were actually “saved” from the bondage of themselves to the bondage of Christ, which ironically often turned into bondage to themselves.
Far be it from all those preachers that St. Augustine had one day said, “Love God and do what you please.”
The Gospel was a call for bondage disguised in a call for freedom. Only after accepting this Gospel was one plagued with the burden of performing it. It was sustained by our actions, as if our actions maintained its legitimacy in our lives.
We were invited to altars to be “saved” and we were invoked to “let Jesus into our heart” and after that prayer was prayed we were then introduced to a Christ whose yoke was not easy, whose burden did not give rest and whose eyes were constantly judging our every move.
Where exactly had the goodnews gone?
Was the goodnews, the Gospel, the eventual hope in heaven? Cause we all knew the bad news, the bad news that by accepting Christ’s salvation we just accepted his rules and became subject to his chastisement and the chastisement of those who “love” him.
The Gospel could inversely be titled, “Get Saved, Get Rules” or to paraphrase a famous hymn, “All things are ready come to the rules…” Nevermind the feast that only includes Welch’s grape juice.
At least Jesus has been working on a rule book since the Ascension and is preparing that place for us.
At this point, Slavoj Zizek is right. When Christ asks us for nothing he is really asking us for our everything…he is not asking us to be free…he is asking us to be a slave without real freedom, not even freedom in Christ. Freedom in Christ functions as a smoke screen to take away the liberty of salvation.
How in the world has the Gospel been reduced to this…to a simple list of rules and held hostage by a faith more dependent on our faithfulness to a fabricated ethic than the faithfulness of Christ?
Why have we preferred the list of Paul’s rules for his robust theology of justification, love, redemption incarnation and resurrection? Shouldn’t we attempt to understand these ideas so we might better understand any ethical guidance since theological affirmations preceded ethical guidance?
Why have we looked to reinvigorate Leviticus when Jesus brought the end of this world, it’s norms and it’s structures, to a consummation in his resurrection?
Rather than understanding the message of Leviticus via what it is saying, we have emphasized what it is says and foregone its formative function to make a people…a people that Jesus seemed to think could still be created absent a rigid formal adherence to its mandates.
Why have we preferred a flat boring prescriptional Bible that we can easily manipulate and contain in our actions over a living scripture that seeks to challenge us at every turn and renarrate the world into something that looks like the end of the world known as Jesus lifted up for us?
We have turned the bible into a rule book. It is now, unofficially, a historical rule book, nothing more nothing less. It flatly tells us what we have to DO in order to BE Christian and STAY Christian. Case closed. This is its job.
It is just the dictionary to heaven for the uber pious without any analogical, tropological or allegorical application! (Historical methods of reading scripture in the early church that are not rational/ethical/literal in nature)
Is it little wonder people, young people, aren’t interested in the Gospel? We have given them a bunch of rules rather than engendered a passion for the story of Jesus.
We have given them a bible that has less nuance than Dr. Seuss and a witness that demonstrates we care more about waging culture wars for Jesus rather than creating the culture of Kingdom.
Who wants such a Bible and such a faith? To whom does it appeal?
It’s boring. It’s easy. It’s about as deep as a 2nd grade education…and after a person is “saved” this 2nd grade knowledge is supposed to pacify us with its lists until we enter the pearly gates at some indefinite period of time in the near future.
Thanks but no thanks.
There’s nothing of any depth here…just listen online, and at work, to all the shallow people that seem to follow Jesus and how they read the Bible. It will make you sick to see and hear what the Gospel has been turned into.
There is a lot of news close to this premature Gospel but there is no goodnews to be found.
I can hear it now…but ParanormalChrist…Jesus fulfilled the Law, he didn’t abolish it. We have to have rules!! How do we know who wins in the end if we don’t have rules?
As if Christianity is a game of Monopoly.
Did Jesus come to invalidate the Law?
In Matthew 5 he seems to suggest no, but his no is a yes via his interpretation of the Law. Jesus only says no so he in fact can reform the law into something more than it is. This is one of the tricks of Matthews Gospel!
Jesus broke all kinds of Law!
He ate with sinners: tax collectors, women of ill repute and fisherman. He extended forgiveness under his own authority. He walked longer than a Sabbaths day walk and plucked wheat on the Sabbath. He kept women close by. He walked through cemeteries. We don’t once see him ceremonially washing himself before ANY act of ministry. He outright contradicted Moses with his famous, “you have heard is said BUT I say…” statements. Etc., Etc., I digress.
Jesus’ relationship with the Law is a bit different than we like to think.
How have we let something as awesome and ineffable as the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ be turned into a dry list of rules? How have we limited something as limitless as scripture???
Why have we reduced our faith to an ethical norm, one that historically is probably only as old as the Puritans, you know, those folks who occupied New England 400 years ago and made Jesus the Christ culpable in a few historical curiosities?
Why have we not taken Paul serious when he says that in Christ all things are lawful?
In Corinthians, Paul states that when he is with Jews he will not eat meat sacrificed to idols but when he is with Greeks he encourages the divine barbeque.
What’s going on here? Is Paul being Petra’s “Chameleon” changing with his surroundings? Is Paul being a New Testament hypocrite, coming under the Book of Revelation’s warning to “luke warm Christians” or is Paul being fully free in Christ and living out his faith as one not bound by the law?
Perhaps Paul believes the Gospel transcends petty ethical norms that have nothing to do with believing Jesus is somehow incarnate God and humanities great hope.
There is no one more qualified than Paul to say that our theology, our faith, our kerygma, is larger than our religious understanding. Here is a man that lived and breathed the law, by heart, hid it in his heart! And yet after seeing Jesus Christ…the resurrected Jesus became his agenda, not his obedience to Leviticus, Deuteronomy or any cultural standard grounded in human norms.
Yet we have not taken Paul’s advice. We have not followed Jesus or read the Gospels careful enough.
We have confused the Gospel with its “rules” and many, many, many of the “rules” we invoke have no firm grounding biblically or theologically. They are the products of Puritan holdovers and of fundamentalist interpretation of scripture of the past 125 years, making for one deadly combination that seeks to zap the life right out of the Gospel and dematerialize a very material redemption alive in Jesus.
Being Christian now means…follow these rules:
Read this book. Pray this often. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.
If others don’t like it, well, they are going to hell anyway. I’m going to get fat and happy with my 2nd grade faith and the list of rules given to me by the teacher.
I like Paul’s rules, not his theology. I didn’t even know he had theology.
I like Jesus’ ministry, but not his take on Moses.
I like the teachings of the church, but only when those teachings take the appearance of actions that momma and them always told me.
And on and on and on.
For those of you who don’t follow Jesus because the Gospel is presented like this. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t either.
It saddens me that we have traded in a robust faith and a deepening understanding of God in Christ as revealed through the powerful pages of the Bible for a faith that has been reduced to Aristotle…a faith that is just a list to do.
The Sermon on the Mount has become The Nichomachean Ethics.
Jesus is no longer the eschatological prophet of God…Jesus and his followers are just supreme ethicists with Gnostic aspirations…but this helps them sleep at night and helps them control their eternal “destiny,” which is why Jesus came in the first place (insert sarcasm here).
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill would be proud.
Too bad it’s their Gospel we are proclaiming and not that of Jesus.
It’s a shame really. The world could really use a good word right about now.
ParanormalChrist 