Does “Jesus Gets Us” get Jesus?

They look in the mirror of their souls and see Jesus.  That’s the best explanation of the “Jesus Gets Us” campaign.  This biographical process isn’t a new phenomenon as even a cursory study of “life of Jesus” literature makes clear. 

The most famous review of previous “lives of Jesus” was written by the scholarly humanitarian Albert Schweitzer:  Von Reimarus zu Wrede: eine Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, a title often translated as The Quest of the Historical Jesus.  Here’s Schweitzer’s prefatory summary:  “Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus”—a rational Messiah, a romantic Jesus, a social gospel reformer, et cetera.  Ironically, Schweitzer’s own portrait pointed to an inscrutable but spiritually powerful figure focused on the end of times about whom nothing much could be confidently known.

To be fair, most scholarly portraits resulted from attempts to utilize what was considered reliable biblical evidence.  As far as I can tell, the “Jesus Gets Us” folk compose their caricature based on a single act performed by Jesus on his disciples and a 60s Beatles’ song, “All You Need Is Love.”  Missing is any serious consideration of the plethora  of data points that provide a more realistic portrait of the first century Jew hailed as “the Christ” (i.e. the Messiah) by his followers.  Since “Jesus Gets Us” ads evidence no concern for “historical critical” issues and takes the biblical narrative at face value, I shall do the same and see how that narrative comports with their foot-washing Jesus. 

As noted earlier, there is only one gospel account of Jesus washing feet (John 13:1-15), and that was performed on his apostles at the Last Supper.  It’s unclear how “Jesus gets us” folk would incorporate the perfumed anointing of Jesus’ own feet by a woman described as “a sinner” (Luke 7:48ff.) into their ads or, more to the point, the judgmental command to “sin no more” given to another woman caught in adultery whose stoning was nixed by Jesus’ suggestion that the first stone be cast by someone without sin (John 8:11).   

Furthermore, I can’t imagine the “Jesus Gets Us” Messiah issuing this dictum: “I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery” (Matthew 6:32).  It’s hard to see that same Jesus washing the feet of a woman emerging from an abortion mill like Planned Parenthood.  Then there’s the warning to, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves,” an admonition that could arguably be applied to obsessive foot-washers.  Indeed, it’s hard to envision those folks taking seriously half or more of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), especially this rather harsh command:  “Do not give dogs what is holy; and do not throw your pearls before swine“ (Matthew 7:6).  Finally, the Jesus who overturns the tables of money-changers in the Temple (Mark 11:15-17) is clearly filled with more righteous indignation than the “no questions asked” foot-washer who effectively inverts the biblical Master’s command to “be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). 

This incompatibility exercise could be extended ad nauseam, but it’s sufficient to show that the “Jesus Gets Us” portrait is, to be generous, incomplete.  There are, to be sure, a significant number of sayings and stories that comport well with the foot-washing image:  association with outcasts (e.g. Samaritans, women, and sinners of various stripes), the command to love one’s enemies, and a readiness to forgive transgressions.  But left out of the “Jesus Gets Us” portrait is a clear moral, spiritual voice that is diminished and distorted by a silent Messiah on his knees tacitly overlooking moral outrages that litter twenty first century America and for which, like “family planning,” Leftists have a soft spot in their hearts.

This Jesus who keeps his mouth shut and does what the Jesus of the gospels never does (i.e. wash the feet of prostitutes, political protesters, and haters of scriptural tradition) is precisely the Jesus folks desire who wish to consign religion to an irrelevant closet.  No moral demands, no condemnations, no judgments come from this Jesus-- only an action that implies passive acquiescence.  Apparently, for the “Jesus Gets Us” crew the ambiguous “Judge not” admonition in Matthew 7:1 constitutes the only verbal command they take to heart. The following verses (2-5), however, clearly imply judgments, but judgments based on self-reflection and humility.  An “absolutist” interpretation would mean that nothing will be expected of those who pass no judgments at all (cf. v. 2) and thus would contradict the plethora of judgments made by Jesus himself (cf. Matthew 23) and also expected of his followers (e.g. Mark 6:7-12).       

It is the “no-judgment, foot-washing Jesus” that seems to inhabit the souls of those who, ironically, don’t wish to arouse the kind of hatred from the powers that be that brought about the crucifixion of the real Jesus.  This “no judgment” mentality is also, not coincidentally, the default position within our largely libertine pop culture, a rule that is invariably broken to judge the “judgmental” — i.e. individuals and institutions that give voice to traditional or biblical moral standards. 

The “Jesus Gets Us” Jesus doesn’t “get” the One who spoke a lot more about exalted moral and spiritual truths than he foot-washed.  The construct does provide, however, an acceptable religious image for a permissive, rudderless culture scared to death of being judged by its rotten fruit.  For that culture a non-suffering, non-speaking, non-confrontational foot-washer works quite well.   

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle    

                

RAPING HISTORY AND LITERATURE

Rape involves total disregard for the autonomy and worth of the person assaulted, reducing the victim to the status of a malleable object.  Something of the same attitude obtains when it comes to the deconstruction of history and literature.  Historical facts or the integrity of a piece of literature are approached with only the desire to make them conform to the violator’s druthers--no dialogue allowed.

Whatever one thinks about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, for most Americans their thoughts are likely shaped more by Oliver Stone’s mendacious film, JFK, than by the most rudimentary facts of the case:  Lee Harvey Oswald worked at the Texas School Book Depository; he bummed a ride to work that day holding a long object wrapped in brown paper that he told the driver contained curtain rods; Oswald had created a shooting blind with book cartons on the sixth floor where he worked; three shell cartridges and the aforementioned brown wrapping paper were found there after the assassination; several parade attendees saw a sixth floor shooter and one, Howard Brennan, provided a detailed description; Oswald was the only person who left the building after the assassination; Oswald then jumped on a bus and traveled to the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, but before ducking into the movie theater where he was apprehended, Oswald shot and killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit (a fact confirmed by twelve eyewitnesses and ballistic evidence).

These facts only scratch the surface of what is known about the Fidel Castro loving loser whose “horrifically spelled Historic Diary” provides all one needs to know about this mentally unstable individual who had previously defected to the USSR, attempted suicide, and seven months prior to  Kennedy’s assassination tried to kill a prominent conservative Texas politician, General Edwin Walker.  A concise overview of these and other facts are still obtainable via a 1992 Commentary article by the late American Studies Professor Jacob Cohen, a piece composed in response to Stone’s assassination fantasy.  Gerald Posner’s Case Closed (1993) goes over much the same evidence and also provides information about Jim Garrison that’s 180 degrees opposite the heroic portrait acted by Kevin Costner.   In short, Oliver Stone’s deconstruction of history treats his subject matter like a completely malleable object. 

Literature, of course, is a different animal from history, but if one treats it with respect, a Shakespeare play, for example, will be read and acted giving primary attention to the integrity of the work itself—a task that involves familiarity with the language, customs, and beliefs of the time.  Dr. Gideon Rappaport provides just such an example of this Herculean task in his work, Hamlet, a book that displays both his dramaturgical experience and scholarly expertise vis-à-vis the works of Shakespeare.  (Cf. also his Appreciating Shakespeare, which provides an eye-opening description of Shakespeare’s significant education.)

Like most non-experts, what I knew of the play was pretty much on the same level as what most Americans know about the Kennedy assassination, uninformed observations concerning the Prince’s inability to act. If, however, one pays attention to the words and ideas articulated in the play itself and takes seriously what both Shakespeare and his audience doubtless believed (namely, a Christian view of God and the afterlife) a much different drama emerges.  As Rappaport often mentions, quoting Hamlet’s words in the play, the actors “cannot keep counsel, they’ll tell all.”  And what confronts a modern audience or reader when  the words of Hamlet and Shakespeare are taken seriously isn’t an existentialist or Freudian drama but rather a “Christian tragedy” that exhibits the consequences of exceeding human limits and taking upon oneself decisions properly left to God.  In Hamlet’s case the usurpation of a divine prerogative wasn’t in exacting vengeance on the reigning King for his father’s death, but rather in also seeking to determine his murderous uncle’s eternal destiny.    

This exceeding of proper limits (a theme often repeated in Hamlet via conversations where various golden means are recommended) is certainly a concept worth pondering whatever one’s take on matters theological.  The hubris involved in, for example, deconstructing traditional social and political institutions (as “institutionally racist”) or even manipulating language itself (e.g. a Supreme Court justice unable to define the word “woman”) is likely to lead to consequences more tragic than the death-filled final scene in Hamlet (e.g. the French Revolution, the Soviet Union, Cambodia’s killing fields).

Hamlet’s ill-fated send-Claudius-to-hell scheming is mirrored and magnified in the hubris exhibited by Davos billionaires who view themselves as demigods capable of shaping the economic, political, and even meteorological future of the entire globe.  If they could listen with humility to the lessons of history, literature, or even climatology, their illusions of grandeur would be tempered.  But alas, humility is a virtue that has given way to private jets and caviar-sated spreads at destinations where outsized egos plot the future of proletarians consigned to miniature apartments, no private transportation, and diets consisting of fried insects when solar- or wind-powered electricity happens to be available.   

Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"  is also available on Kindle