Both the conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism: in either case the dread of being left out of their reference groups.
--Thomas Merton
The Empire of Modernity tolerates and encourages two different false pictures of Jesus. To make this point, I broadly reduce these to "red" and "blue" admittedly hyperbolic caricatures. But most American Christians lean towards one of these two poles.
1. The Red "Jesus"
In my experience many Christians who loudly proclaim that they rigidly stick to the Bible, nevertheless often project a wildly unbiblical "Jesus" who functions as a mascot for the worst impulses of Empire. He haunts the imagination of many Christians raised within the old Christendom model. The most extreme versions show a gun-toting, white nationalist "Jesus" with predictably blue eyes and long blonde hair, who hates LGBTQ people, immigrants, the poor, Blacks, Muslims, and Jews -- but somehow also loves the Israelis. The January 6 insurrectionists invoked this "Jesus," as did the KKK before them. We call them White Christian Nationalists.
Even if they don't go for that explicit picture, many still see a "Jesus" who supports Capitalism, militarism, colonialism, patriarchy, and a return to the traditional morality of the 1950's. He advocates, or at least tolerates or even disregards, the wanton exploitation of natural resources, especially fossil fuels, therefore denying and exacerbating the climate crisis. He justifies self-righteous violence, lying, theft, bullying, and brutality done in his name, especially by law enforcement or the military. He seems to need us to protect him. The Positive Thinking/Prosperity Gospel rendition of this "Jesus" transactionally blesses his followers with material wealth and rewards the strong willed.
This version of "Jesus" exists mainly to separate and differentiate the "saved" from everyone else. His disciples seem to have a deep concern that hell be fully populated; at any rate, they enthusiastically threaten hell as a consequence of behavior they deem bad. Their Jesus died only for the sins of those who believe in him, who often call themselves "born again." This apparently licenses them to sin further without consequence. His death placated the offended honor of an angry heavenly Father, whose wrath may yet be unleashed on America unless it keeps feeding Him the blood of weak and poor people to maintain the Empire's social order. Many believe he will shortly "rapture" them all up into a heavenly paradise, allowing everyone else and creation itself to fall into painful horrors, while they watch from afar. Until then, their "Jesus" serves mainly to hand out to very few worthy believers tickets to an afterlife in heaven.
Sadly, many Christians only know this perverse and false "Jesus," and they assume/demand that all Christians relate only to him. When some come to realize the damage this all does, to themselves, others, and the earth, not to mention its wild distortion of the Jesus to whom Scripture attests, they understandably flee. In the process they also too often either reject Christianity altogether, or seek (or invent) a less toxic "Jesus."
2. The Blue "Jesus"
On the left we have a very different "Jesus." If the red one was about grief, fear, and anger, craving power, stability, and security, and valorizing the past, the blue "Jesus" exists mainly to gratify our desires and point us towards a glorious future here on earth. These Christians believe in reason and progress. They want to "build the Kingdom of God" here and now. If red believers work their own theological contortions to render Jesus' uncomfortable teachings inert, the blue people place the Jesus of the New Testament under the knife of scientific, historical-critical vivisection. This gives them a more sophisticated way to rationalize ignoring and dismissing the parts of the scriptural witness that do not fit their preconceived ideology and preference.
Thus the blues as well have produced a "Jesus" that looks like them: a cynical teacher who wandered around Palestine making wry comments on the one hand mystifyingly esoteric and on the other advocating revolutionary social change, in the end unwittingly getting himself crucified by Rome. He, of course, did not make any claim to deity, and his tragic death had no purpose beyond identification with others similarly maltreated. He worked no supernatural healings or miracles, much less exorcisms. He did not talk about Satan, or angels, or demons, or of the end of the world. He certainly did not rise from the dead except in the most metaphorical, symbolic, and psychological sense. The blue "Jesus" required nothing of his followers except that they do what they want and be themselves.
Blue "Jesus" was "spiritual but not religious," and actively opposed establishment institutions and traditions. He looked, talked, and acted like a 1960's hippie: an airy, vague, new agey guru (who probably did a lot of weed and shacked up with Mary Magdalene). Unfortunately, his followers (the worst being Paul) quickly established the oppressive institutional Church which perverted and distorted his teachings, in the process violently stomping out innocent and gentle flower-children like the Gnostics and other so-called heretics, who were way more like Jesus than the nasty men who constructed the New Testament.
Neither "Jesus" comes very close to the Jesus Christ to which the New Testament attests. Rather, they each package and sell a "Jesus" which protects the interests, values, biases, desires, fears, and fantasies of those inventing, sustaining, and projecting him. Both of them ignore and/or mangle aspects of the New Testament text in order to extract a "Jesus" who gets them to their goals and justifies whatever their prior psychological, political, economic, and social commitments demand. And both represent ways of thinking pushed by Empire/Modernity. Like sports teams, they look adversarial, but they play the same game according to the same rules. No matter who happens to win, it is always merely "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" (Pete Townsend).
Red Christians want to block undeserving people from coming to the table, while blue Christians want to allow everyone equal access to the table... but both relate to Empire's table, in the sense of investing in Modernity's values, habits, assumptions, and ways of thinking.
3. Full-Spectrum Jesus Christ, Attested in Scripture.
The Jesus of the New Testament, however, overturns Empire's table, and proclaims a different Table altogether. This Jesus challenges, undercuts, and existentially threatens the authority of Empire, offering an alternative commonwealth he calls "the Kingdom of God." We cannot domesticate, co-opt, neutralize, tame, or even conclusively define this Jesus. At any point Jesus may strike us with some word or action that does not compute according to our ideology and way of thinking, and even contradicts it. Jesus offends both the right and left sides of Modernity's binary framing.
We see this, for instance, in the two groups of people Jesus took heat for associating with: prostitutes and tax collectors. Accepting prostitutes rankled people concerned with preserving conventional morality. And reaching out to tax collectors annoyed those interested in conventional ways of resisting the establishment. We also see it in the fact that Jesus' antagonists ranged across the political spectrum from the collaborationist Sadducees, to the more populist Pharisees, to the revolutionary Zealots.
The Jesus Christ to whom Scripture attests understands his mission as one of liberating the creation and human life from submission to malevolent supernatural, and earthly political/economic, influences that cause injustice, disease, possession, and death. Jesus readily talks about angels, demons, and Satan as significant powers in human existence. Jesus presents a rather high bar of redemption, saying things like "Many are called but few are chosen," and talks about an eternal life beyond the death of our physical bodies. Jesus insists on the seriousness of our moral decisions and actions, insisting that we will all receive the consequences of our complicity in evil, which may include rendition to a place of spiritual retribution.
Jesus teaches and calls disciples to a life of nonviolence, humility, equity, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness, and fearless joy. Jesus includes in his circle a radically wide spectrum of humanity, welcoming those excluded, silenced, judged, and condemned by the religious and political/economic establishment. This Jesus directly alleviates the suffering of people in their bodily, temporal existence, and offers to all an inextinguishable life of union with and in the Creator and all.
Where red Christians manage to reduce morality mainly to the personal, private, and sexual, Jesus talks mostly about the pursuit of money, fame, and power, and targets mainly the rich and religious hypocrites. He thus has a radically anti-establishment, anti-Empire mission.
Jesus challenges everyone by insisting, against Modernity generally, upon the necessity that we renounce the rule of ego in order allow his own Presence, to emerge with, within, and among us. This will necessarily entail suffering. Jesus himself instructs his disciples to take up their own "cross" and follow him. His death on a Roman cross shows his resistance to Empire, and his resurrection thereafter reveals Empire's powerlessness against his work. Jesus inspires and gathers a community of followers who witness to, anticipate, and exemplify the Creator's emerging Reign of shalom. Jesus foresees the ongoing violent collapse of the Empire and the simultaneous emergence of the Creator's Reign among all.
The Church will always find it challenging to have this Jesus Christ as its only Sovereign in life and in death. But it only lives by, in, and for him. Our entire life means discerning, embracing, and following God's will. We need systems and processes that empower us to do this. And that will not happen until we let go of Modernity's rules and criteria, and let go of Modernity's false Jesuses -- red and blue.
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