Stop Worshiping The Wrong Jesus

We are living through a devastating time of disruption and change. The world is at war in seen and unseen ways while technology slowly replaces us, our capabilities, our intelligence, our values, our humanity, our truth, our worth.

The war is not between left and right, but between dark and light.

You don't have to go to another country to see the fallout from this war. Around the globe, the darkest among us have been deemed dispensable by the most powerful among us. But in our country they're also being erased from history.

If there ever was a time for a helping hand from heaven, this would be it. But too many Christians are waiting for the wrong Jesus to return.

Jim Palmer is an ordained minister and former Evangelical Mega Church pastor. He's the author of several books in which he reflects on some fundamental truths about Jesus.

Below is a bit from his book "Inner Anarchy". I happen to agree with him. My wish is for Christians to stop worshiping an imaginary Jesus. The real Jesus is already here dwelling in each of us, asking us to act more like him. It's the only thing that has the power to fix the mess we're in.

Excerpt from Inner Anarchy:

"Jesus did not tell people to behave themselves and accept the world as it was. He told them the world they had accepted as normal was upside down, and then he started turning it over.

"That is why the historical Jesus was a lightning rod. Rome didn't crucify people for being nice. Crucifixion was public torture carried out by an empire against people it regarded as threats to its order. Jesus ended up hanging on a Roman cross. Sit with that for a moment before turning it into jewelry.

"Which brings us to the church's favorite question: WWJD?

"Please.

"Most Christians don't actually want Jesus doing what Jesus did. They want him safely contained in stained glass. They want a Jesus who blesses their lives, validates their beliefs, protects their tribe, endorses their politics, forgives their sins, guarantees heaven when they die, and asks as little as possible of them in the meantime.

"The actual Jesus is far more threatening. He might overturn some tables. He might ask why your church needs another multimillion-dollar building while people sleep on sidewalks. He might sit beside the person your religion says God rejects. He might have harsher words for religious hypocrisy than for the people you've been calling sinners.

"Jesus said that following him meant taking up a cross. We turned the cross into a necklace. There may be no better symbol for what institutional Christianity has done to Jesus. An instrument of execution became an accessory. A summons to radical transformation became a belief system. The man who challenged religious authority became the supreme authority of another religion. Somewhere along the way, believing things about Jesus became a substitute for becoming anything like him.

"Because worshiping Jesus is much easier than following him. You can worship Jesus and keep your privilege, protect your reputation, despise your neighbor, surrender your conscience to a political party, and remain comfortably embedded in systems that exploit, exclude, humiliate, and destroy other people. You can worship Jesus without changing much of anything. Following him is another matter.

"Following Jesus puts something at risk: your certainty, your comfort, your status, your tribe, your need to be right, and your allegiance to institutions that demand your silence or complicity.

"Maybe that is why Christianity has spent two thousand years making Jesus safer. A domesticated Jesus can be worshiped without disturbing much of anything. The Jesus before Christianity is considerably harder to deal with.

"And there is a bitter irony in all of this: the man who terrified religious authorities became the centerpiece of a religion that is often terrified of people who behave like him."

— Jim Palmer, Author, Inner Anarchy