Jesus! There’s Just Something About That Name
| © by John Fischer for CCM Magazine, August, 2001 issue. | |
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A reader recently wrote me about an insight she received during a Bible
study she teaches regularly to female inmates in a local prison.
Apparently in one of their sessions while discussing the gory details
of the crucifixion, one of the prisoners cried out, “Jesus!” Now, because she meant this more as an expletive than a prayer, the teacher reported how she found herself getting a little angry at first. But then she thought, “Why would I expect someone in jail for prostitution and crack addiction to behave in a holy way?” She concluded that the prisoner’s response, given her place in life at the time and the subject under discussion, should have been expected. I believe Jesus would have been the last one offended by His name being used in this scenario. The inmate grasped something of the significance of His death on the cross, and she expressed that realization exactly as anyone might expect her to. Why are Christians the first to be offended by the world? Are we really that much better than everyone else? It seems to be a constant theme among Christians: That the world is getting more and more decadent. Preachers bemoan this. Politicians deplore it. Parents worry over it. Christians, especially American Christians, live with a kind of moral chip on our shoulders as if somehow deserve a better world than the one we got. A world that offends us is hard to rationalize with the gospel of grace. Sometimes I think we are more engaged in our own piety than we are in the real needs of those around us who are unsaved and without God. We are more prone to be put off by a homosexual’s lifestyle than we are to be concerned about the fact that he may be dying of AIDS. We are more hurt by non-Christians than we hurt for them. Our desire for a safe world sometimes eclipses a desire to love people, identify with them in their sin (since we are sinners, too) and bring them the good news of salvation. As a frequent guest speaker about Christianity and contemporary culture, I am familiar with the ongoing debate over whether Christians should watch R-rated movies or read novels full of offensive language. I can sympathize with how a Christian might want to be careful about his or her entertainment. But there is always a part of this discussion I can never understand: the part that makes it sound like we want a nicer world, at least where we can control it. I always wonder how the person who doesn’t want swearing in their movies handles a regular day at work. If they are offended by it in a movie, I am sure they are offended by it in life, and to some degree, the non-Christian will know that too. How can you witness to an unsaved person about the grace of God that saved you from your sin, when the real message that person is getting from you is that they offend your sense of holiness? How much of our message to the world is really, “Clean yourself up, and I will tell you about Jesus. Otherwise, I really don’t want to be around you because everything about you offends me.” I think, sooner or later, it comes down to the fact that we can choose our entertainment but we can’t choose our world. This is the only world we’ve got, and if it offends us, then we’ve got to get over that for the sake of the gospel. I have read the life of Christ over and over again, and not once have I ever found Jesus offended by a sinner. I do find him offended by the Pharisees, however, and the Pharisees would be the people Jesus encountered who were most offended by their world. Their self-righteousness set them apart from everyone else, and Jesus never liked that about them. Jesus appeared to always prefer the company of offensive people over those who saw themselves as the offended. We can choose our entertainment but we can’t choose our world. And the good news is that Jesus can, and He chose this one--this real-life, R-rated world we live in. He chose to be here rather than to stay in heaven where everything is nice. We need to be more willing to adjust to our world for the sake of Christ and the gospel than to keep insisting that the world adjust to us. This is what incarnation is all about. God became human and dwelt among us. Yet the only ones who truly offended Him were self-righteous religious people like us. Jesus would have really liked that woman in her prison Bible study who used His name as she did when she found out what His death was like on the cross. He would have been right there with her. He probably is. | |
