Your Jesus is Helpless

I found myself in a cafe today, when a gentleman overheard my conversation with another person and chimed in.  We were merely making small talk about bicycles.  The next thing I know I am hearing about this man's two bikes.  He went in detail about the type of tires he likes to use.  He emphasized to me the need to look into similar tires for my bike.  I just listened and spoke where I was given opportunity.  

At one point the conversation shifted from all things related to him as he inquired about my job.  I said, "I'm a pastor."  To which he then inquired further, "Oh yeah.  What church?"  For the next two minutes I shared just briefly about myself and moving to the community a year ago.  Then for the next twenty minutes I heard of the church he is a part of now as well as the many churches he has been a part of in the past.  He spent much time talking about the stupidity of anyone who believes the earth is a mere 6,000 years old.  Frankly, I am a young earth guy, but I care too little about defending my stance any longer.  It is such a insignificant issue comparatively speaking. 

And then he moved the discussion (more like monologue) from those "lesser important" issues onto the main message of the Bible.  He was generous enough to bring Christ into the conversation.  In fact I found myself moderately excited when he began to talk by saying, "The most important message the Bible teaches is in Christ."  I held some hope that maybe this man knew the Truth.  But then he said, "The entire message of Christ that we need is in his example of learning to love people, help them with their needs, and live with each other peaceably."  

I stopped him there and I said, "Certainly Christ teaches us much about what it is to live in and among humanity, but the greatest message in the ministry of Christ was in that He died for our sins and how He frees us to live for God."  He then looked at me and said, "I am not so sure I understand what you mean."  I found myself thinking of how unlikely this was that he hadn't heard this before.  In fact I met his pastor at the church he is at now right in town here. I have even been there.  Little was said of Christ, but surely in the scope of the past 4-5 years at this congregation he must have heard it, if not from the pulpit then through a song.  Though later he did make note that even this church is a bit too conservative for him theologically (to which I shudder because they border on Neo-Orthodox theology).  As I continued I said, "You see what Christ was doing was not physical or relational in nature as relates merely human to human.  That is a part of the outworking of His ultimate purpose.  But the greatest purpose and work of Christ was in suffering for the sins of those who would ultimately believe in Him.  It was to enable people to have a relationship with God because on our own we are not able to make ourselves right before God."  

As I finished talking (trying to be sensitive to his disapproving and even somewhat tense face) I watched him look at me and just deny what I had just said.  He only said, "Yeah, I am not so sure about that.  I think Jesus was just teaching us how to give ourselves for one another."  And so concluded the conversation between he and I. 

I walked away thinking just how helpless his version of Jesus is.  Oh great, Jesus is going to teach us lessons on love.  He is going to give us the ultimate guide to sacrifice and selflessness.  He gives us the most vivid words of how to really live.  But even this man I met doesn't realize how contradictory his version of Jesus is.  "His Jesus" tells what should be done, but doesn't enable it to happen.  After all, didn't Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, the very Bible this man attested to, didn't HE also say we are sinners?  Didn't He paint pictures of the deadness and blindness to matters spiritual?   Didn't HE also talk about the very inability every human has to do anything and everything that HE requires?  

To which I started thinking: How is a moral Jesus at all a benefit to us? We can't overcome our sin!  How is this sage Jesus at all a benefit?  We can't follow His teachings to the required level of perfect obedience!  How is it my friend from Starbucks can embrace some parts of the teaching of Jesus as being any bit "good" and the "most important thing Jesus did", but deny this GOSPEL MESSAGE of Christ's substitutionary atonement?  To which I weep as I say, "YOUR JESUS IS HELPLESS, AND IS NOT REALLY JESUS."

And in all this I am only reminded again that few people really know Jesus.  And while we who have been awakened to see and believe, even then, we barely see.  So I pray this night.  I pray for God to awaken this man.  I pray for God to cause us to see more people around us, and learn to listen to their stories to where we can eventually gain an audience with them, to share and share again and again, the glorious GOSPEL of JESUS because "their Jesus" is unable to convict them of sin, let alone save them.  

They need JESUS, the glorious life-giving, sin-forgiving, and righteousness-imparting JESUS we know.   This is the Real Jesus, not some helpless Jesus.