Easter and Good Television

I've decided that, at least in what I have seen through life, God does not make good television. I'm not trying to say that the work God does isn't interesting, but it doesn't make good television in the sense of what we are used to and what we expect in our culture, in our daily lives.

We are a deprived people, starving for intense emotion, something that pulls for more of us than our jobs, our daily routines. We tend to find that in television. It takes us away from reality and puts us in situations of intensity and sensation that we probably wouldn't encounter without writers and producers of our own.

So we expect sensationalism and intensity from God because we are immersed in it from every other angle in life, so why not from God? But in my experience, it just doesn't happen the way Hollywood would design. Sometimes the heroes in our lives die unexpectedly, sometimes we keep the jobs we don't really want, and there really isn't a musical score to everything we do. There tends to be less blood, thoughts and words seem a little scattered and there's a lot to dig through, it doesn't always sit on the surface.

But what we do as Christians today is we feel like God maybe left that part out. So here we go trying to fill in all of the "boring Gospel" with pumped up intensity. Mars Hill Church in Seattle evidently crucified one of their church members for thirty minutes. I don't know if they actually physically nailed him to a cross, but I know that there was a violence warning in attending the service. I've installed million dollar audio visual systems in some churches and I've seen similar set ups in many others. I've been to churches that use laser lights and fog machines during their worship services. All of that on top of the quirky bumper stickers that slay evolutionist self-esteem and warn people of the hazards of driving during the rapture, combined with our own books, music, schools, and cloths (food maybe?). We have turned the power and majesty of God into another item we can wear on our belts like an iPod or a cell phone.

I understand why this movement started. Relevance. People wanted to feel relevant in our world for following Christ. I can understand that desire. We started off as the underdog with "Jesus Saves" and the music that was aimed at praising God in a more modern form. Christians wanted it to be cool to be Christian by definition from society. But that developed into something destructive which is still taking its toll today. It gave birth to a cause that is completely scripturally unsound. Protect the culture, save Christ from the darkness of the world.

I am reminded of Peter in the garden when Jesus was taken. We remember that during this time of year. Peter was outraged, grabbed a sword, and struck off the ear of one of the guards that held Jesus. But Jesus didn't run away or give Peter a trendy high-five. Jesus looked at Peter, had him put down his sword, and then healed the Roman soldier.

We are now like Peter. We're a little slow, overly confident in our own importance in the execution of God's design. We set targets on those who would lay siege to Christ and we lift up our swords in the name of protecting Him and our children. Gays, liberals, Disney, Islam, Immigrants. We fight them on a daily basis because they wish to corrupt us, destroy us, separate us.

"What the democrats don't understand is that the Bible supports war." I heard a co-worker say with a confident smile on his face. War, after all, is intense and brave and sensational.
But what a sad thing to hear. A Christian proclaiming a message that completely disregards the Gospel. The Bible did support war. The Old Testament is full of the destruction of those who opposed Christ. But then the defining moment for us, especially the Gentiles, occurred. It was the death and resurrection of God's only Son. Before that, we too would have been considered in opposition to God. We were not His chosen people. This is the New Testament, God's wrath laid to rest through the death of His Son Jesus Christ. Because of that, we were given the gift of selfless love that would have us lay down our lives in the faces of our enemies. It would have us love our Children and teach them to do likewise. We cannot hate in the name of them. That is not Christ. Protection by love and by faith, rejoicing in persecution because in our weakness, God's strength is made complete. That is the Gospel.

If Jesus were here among us in the flesh, do you think He would be attacking the Gays, leading the Republican party, stomping out sinners left and right in the name of protecting our Children? I read the New Testament and I just can't find that image of Christ anywhere. What I do find, however, is frightening. It is Christ's contempt towards the religious leaders who should have known everything about who He would be, but got so lost in ideas, images, and laws that they not only didn't recognize him when He came, but they had the Romans kill him.

If Christ was here today and he allowed a gay man to wash his feet with his tears, if he went to bars to love the broken, if he stopped off in a half-way house for dinner, would we recognize him? I really believe that we would have a hard time because the Gospel I read does not show the kind of Jesus that we proclaim to the world through our actions as the American Church. So perhaps if He hypothetically did come again subtly, maybe we wouldn't see him so clearly. Perhaps we would put him off and wait for what we idealize in our minds as the "real thing". Is that so outrageous to believe that we are any less sinful, any less human than the people who cried out for the Son of God's blood over 2000 years ago?

Scary thing to think about here on this Easter morning.