A bit back, I posted a link to this article on my Facebook feed. The response was predictable: my comments were full of Christians objecting to the notion that Jesus wasn’t a nice guy.
Now, I’m not complaining; this is trouble I’m happy to be in. Jesus was not, in fact, a nice guy, and I don’t mind annoying folks who think He was. As you can see, I have a mug in the cupboard for just such occasions.
(Yes, really. My daughter-in-the-faith Anna got it for me, and I love it!)
If you need a demonstration that Jesus was not a nice guy, go ahead and re-read the gospels. I’ll wait. This post isn’t about that. This post is about the trends I’ve noticed in the outraged (or “concerned”) responses to such observations. I’ve noticed three major defenses against the council of God here: christological heresy, pragmatics, and abstract nouns.
Christological Heresy
Now obviously, there are the folks who will trot out the old chestnut, “Well, Jesus was God and you’re not, so….” Ignore these people. Their objection is functionally a christological heresy, the notion that Jesus is not human the way you are human, such that He presents you with an example of what a human life should look like. Besides, honestly, they’re being intellectually dishonest. These same people are in favor of being christlike when we’re talking about humility or caring for the poor or washing someone’s feet; it’s only when you start talking like Jesus in ways that will get you uninvited to the cool kids’ table that they trot out their “Jesus was God” excuse.
Besides, John the Baptist wasn’t God, and he called the religious leaders a “brood of vipers” too. Amos wasn’t God, and he famously called the mall rats of Jerusalem a bunch of cows. Ezekiel wasn’t God, and his comments about donkeys continue to scandalize 2500 years later. Paul wasn’t God, and he publicly wished the circumcision party would just chop it off. All these mere humans were led by the Holy Spirit to describe scandalous things honestly, in a scandalous way. Obviously this is a tool a righteous man can be led by God to employ.
Pragmatics
Some folks won’t bother to argue about whether Jesus did, in fact, say these things, or even about whether we’re allowed to say them. They’ll just encourage you to “keep the main thing the main thing,” remain “gospel-centered,” and promise you that you’ll see better results if you just focus on the gospel rather than “getting sidetracked.” What these folks are missing is—in their terms—that the gospel is supposed to be the center of something. We’re here to proclaim the full council of God, and to follow Jesus’ whole example, not just a core sample of Jesus’ praxis that happens to fit some tight-shoed schoolmarm’s canons of niceness. They seem to honestly think they can get better results than Jesus got by taking a different approach than He did. All I can say is…good luck with that.
Abstract Nouns
Finally, there are the folks who will bury you under an onslaught of abstract nouns. This approach will start with an appeal to a basic biblical command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” “Let your speech be always with grace.” “Be kind to one another.”
Then you will be challenged to be loving/gracious/kind based on the biblical command, which , ex hypothesi, means that you’re not allowed to talk like Jesus did.
Any appeal to Jesus’ example will generally be met with the “He was God” objection, above, and any appeal to any other example will be met with “That passage is descriptive of what the person did in his human frustration, but what makes you think it’s prescriptive for us?” The net result of this hostility to the biblical narratives is that there are no concrete examples to which one might appeal for anything. Then, the abstract nouns like “love,” “kind,” or “gracious” become empty suitcases that we can fill up with whatever we like.
In the absence of having our tastes catechized by the biblical stories, we tend to fall back on whatever our sentiments dictate to us. In the early 21st century church, that generally means we’re falling prey to weapons-grade niceness. In our imaginations, being loving or kind means you would never say anything hard; gracious speech means nobody is ever offended. If someone is offended, that automatically means you’ve done something wrong.
But no. When grace incarnate walked among us, He regularly offended the respectable people. In a particular moment, “children of snakes!” was the kindest, most loving thing anybody could say to the Pharisees, and we know that because Jesus said it.
Go thou, and do likewise.
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