Jesus - Chief Joy or Kill Joy?

In Sunday's message, Pastor Mullen asked whether Jesus Christ is for us our chief joy or a killjoy. Whether he is an "ornament" in our life, or whether he is our life.

As a teenager, I often viewed Jesus as a killjoy -- someone whose rules would prevent me from access to, and success in, the intellectual and artistic world I desired to inhabit. However, when God changed my heart just prior to my 18th birthday, Jesus became my chief joy: All else faded in importance compared to knowing him. Over time, I came to realize that Jesus even breathed new life into the intellectual and artistic endeavors that I had once pursued, but pursued in blindness.

Enjoying God should characterize the Christian's life. It is our loving relationship with the living God, based on costly forgiveness and grace, that separates Christianity from a religious system like all the others.

I've lately been reading, with a friend, John Owen's "Communion with the Triune God." In this dense book, he unpacks the theology of enjoying God. He writes:

Unacquaintedness with our mercies, our privileges, is our sin as well as our trouble. ... This makes us go heavily, when we might rejoice; and to be weak, where we might be strong in the Lord. (Part 1, Chapter 3)

In other words, we rob both God and ourselves when we fail to commune with him. When we fail to take to heart his mercies to us, his love to us, and his gifts to us.

Christmas is a great time to enjoy God's gifts, and in particular the greatest gift of all -- his Son, Jesus Christ. Is Jesus an ornament? Will he be packed away again after the holiday? Or is he reason to celebrate Christmas and, in fact, all 365 days of the year?

Yes, and even the 366th day in 2008!

Matthew Murray, Christopher Hitchens, and the Apostle Peter

"All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."

These were the words of Matthew Murray, the 24 year-old who killed four Christians in Colorado this weekend. He was clearly driven by revenge, and by his own issues with his former church, as biographical details reveal.

Yet when I read the words quoted above, I couldn't help but think of books such as Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Such books by the New Atheists, as they are termed, have lent legitimacy to the notion that all religion, if taken seriously, leads society down a destructive path. (Murray's actions seem to lead to a different conclusion, actually; his motives were clearly not religious but anti-religious in nature!)

In the days of the early church, similar accusations were propagated. The Christians saw this as slander, for it's clear from reading the New Testament that the Christian is to be the most conscientious citizen of all. The Christian who is motivated by devotion to God, and understands the Savior's sacrifice, seeks the well being of all -- not because he is enslaved to the state, but precisely because he is not.

Sadly, Christians have become easy targets. But it's not just because the world loves a scapegoat - it's because Christians have too often not been the citizens God calls us to be. "Nature abhors a vacuum" -- and when Christians are not readily known by their love, the accusations of outsiders appear more plausible.

Therefore let's consider the words of 1 Peter:

Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as those sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. (1 Peter 2:12-14)

And let's pray that the following words of that same epistle will not be true of us:

But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. (1 Peter 4:15)

And most importantly, let's remember what Peter says next!

Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God... For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? (1 Peter 4:16-17)

Christ the Lord!

On Sunday, I read a quotation from Anne Rice concerning her perspective on Jesus. It is fascinating that this former atheist was able to see so much bias in the way many scholars handle the historicity of the gospel accounts.

Below is something I wrote about this last year, with some additional quotations.

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Christ the Lord?


Anne Rice, whose previous books include Interview with a Vampire and Queen of the Damned, recently converted to Christianity. Hers is the Roman Catholic variety, and she retains some questionable beliefs. Her recent novel is entitled Christ the Lord. In an afterward, she tells the fascinating story of her research into the historical reliability of the gospels.

As you hopefully recognize, “Jesus scholars” come in many varieties. There are those who embrace Jesus as Lord, and those who do not. Those who do not often appear on television speaking about the “historical Jesus,” who surprisingly seems far removed from what we read in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is a radical branch of this type of “scholarship” that undergirds the radically popular Da Vinci Code novel.

In Anne Rice’s pursuit to learn the truth about the one who called himself the “Son of God,” she ran across different approaches to him. Here is what she has to say:

Many of these scholars, scholars who apparently devoted their life to New Testament scholarship, disliked Jesus Christ. Some pitied him as a hopeless failure. Others sneered at him, and some felt an outright contempt. This came between the lines of the books. …

I’d never come across this kind of emotion in any other field of research, at least not to this extent. It was puzzling.

The people who go into Elizabethan studies don’t set out to prove that Queen Elizabeth I was a fool. They don’t personally dislike her. They don’t make snickering remarks about her, or spend their careers trying to pick apart her historical reputation. … Occasionally a scholar studies a villain, yes. But even then, the author generally ends up arguing for the good points of a villain or for his or her place in history, or for some mitigating circumstance, that redeems the study itself. … [I]n general, scholars don’t spend their lives in the company of historical figures they openly despise. (Christ the Lord, p.314)

Her studies led her to the following conclusion:

In sum, the whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified if he knew about it -- that whole picture which floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years -- that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I'd ever read.(pp.313-314)

It is important for believers and unbelievers alike to recognize that scholarship is not free from bias. How much more is this true when dealing with the one who called himself "the way, the truth, and the life"!

Is it even possible to be unbiased concerning a historical figure who demanded an answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?”

After all, the answer to that question demands a changed life!