To Worship Jesus is to Worship a Guy You Could Beat Up

One of my favorite paintings called The Holy Trinity by Masaccio

Perhaps like many of you, I’ve been trying to find my bearings in what it means to be Christian in this new era—what some are calling America’s Golden Age, and what others are calling America’s collapse. While processing, I keep returning to a quote from Mark Driscoll in a Relevant interview nearly twenty years ago. They asked several faith leaders, “What do you see as the greatest challenge for young Christians in the next 10 years?”

Driscoll, still the pastor of the megachurch Mars Hill in Seattle, responded this way:

“There is a strong drift toward the hard theological left. Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up. I fear some are becoming more cultural than Christian, and without a big Jesus who has authority and hates sin as revealed in the Bible, we will have less and less Christians, and more and more confused, spiritually self-righteous blogger critics of Christianity.”

The irony, of course, is that to worship Jesus, you must worship a guy you could beat up. You must worship a guy you could crucify. Someone whose “skull you could crush one-handed” as Buechner wrote. Someone whose side you could pierce. Someone who wept in public. Someone who got on his knees and washed the feet of his male friends. Someone who welcomed women into his inner circle. Someone whose brow was pierced by thorns, whose blood dripped down his face. Someone who did not have a wife or kids. Someone who, sweating blood, begged God to spare him from doing the hard thing. Someone who taught his followers to absorb shock, turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile. Someone who rebuked his disciple, Peter, for resorting to violence and healed Malchus, a man who participated in his arrest. Someone who stopped public stonings rather than perpetuating them. Someone who commanded his followers not to judge or condemn. Someone whose strongest rebukes were saved for the powerful, not the weak. Someone who did not break a bruised reed.

This man, Jesus, is the one in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

God did not come to Earth as Caesar Augustus or Herod, eager to scorch the earth in his quest to advance the Kingdom. God did not come as someone who beat others, but as someone who took the beating. Jesus did not leave a trail of bodies in his wake; instead, He gave up His own body to be brutalized and prayed for the forgiveness of His accusers.

If we miss this, we miss the plot.

To be Christian in the Golden Collapse of America is to remember the Kingdom of God— like King Jesus— dies before it kills. The Kingdom of God is a mustard seed, not a marketing scheme. The Kingdom of God is built on sacrifice, not domination. The Kingdom of God is made up of bruised peacemakers, not violent overlords. The Kingdom of God shares with the poor, rather than trampling on them to amass wealth.

I agree with Driscoll that many were (and are) rapidly becoming more cultural than Christian, but his view that true Christianity follows a “pride fighter” Jesus with a commitment “to making someone bleed” is that reflection of our culture, not a reflection of Jesus. To turn Jesus into a 1st century version of Andrew Tate is to take a chisel to the flesh of God and hammer him down until he seems manly enough to deserve our worship. What Driscoll fails to realize is that by convoluting Jesus into a violent warrior king, he is, in effect, beating Jesus up.

In my view, to accept Jesus on Jesus’ terms, then to follow Jesus wherever he leads, is one of the most countercultural things we could do in our lifetime.

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Relevant asked other faith leaders the same question and I want to end by sharing two of their responses, both immensely prophetic. As you read them, remember this was almost twenty years ago:

“What do you see as the greatest challenge for young Christians in the next 10 years?”

Rob Bell: “The unbelievable amassing of wealth and consumer goods that we have at our fingertips in American culture. Our greatest challenge will be to learn how to move this into blessings for others, or we will continue to be more selfish and indifferent to the cries of the world. These insane amounts of goods that are at our service are not doing good things to our souls.”

Lauren Winner: “I suspect the next 10 years will be years of turmoil and hardship the globe over, and with that will come a surge in a certain kind of American patriotism. Therefore, American Christians will be challenged to remember where our true fealty lies. I’m not saying there’s no place for patriotism. But Christians are people whose first allegiance cannot be to a nation-state, not to any nation-state. Increased geopolitical tension may tempt us to forget that.”

Sending love,
Savannah