Saints,
The Identity Crisis continues in the church of Jesus worldwide.
Is His identity the permissive grandfather always full of unlimited grace, smiling at all we do, turning His head away at every sin, and giving us cotton candy as He sends us to have fun at Disney World?
Or is His identity one who is mean, a capricious and arbitrary despot, a cosmic kill joy, and waiting to strike at every opportunity?
What does His Holy Word teach us about His full identity? Are we even in His Word to really know? And why at His throne for eons of time do the creatures sing in antiphonal chorus, “Holy, Holy, Holy?”
Miss who He is in His real identity – and you’ve missed it all. Just ask the unrepentant Laodecean congregation of Revelation 3. Jesus didn’t create, nor does He proclaim, the Religion of Niceness.
Mark Galli is a fine saint who used to edit Christian History. Now, I believe, is in a similar capacity at Christianity Today. He and I have corresponded, for he’s not aloof. He’s a real soldier. I’ve always appreciated his candor and balance. This piece is well worth your consideration.
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WAS JESUS MEAN?
By Mark Galli, published in Christianity Today, used by permission
When Jesus speaks or acts sternly, it seems like a far cry from nice. But it isn’t a far cry from love.
Jesus opens his ministry as a rather exacting rabbi. He suddenly appears before two groups of fishermen and starkly commands them, “Follow me!” (Mark 1:16-20). He tells a deranged man to shut up and then causes him to writhe in pain (Mark 1:25-26). After Jesus heals a helpless leper, Mark says, “sternly warning him, [Jesus] sent him away at once” (Mark 1:43).
The Greek behind the phrase “sternly warning him” can mean “to denounce harshly, to scold.” And the phrase, “he sent him away at once” is a translation of the Greek verb ekballo, which elsewhere is translated “to drive out,” and “to throw out.” A plain reading of the passage suggests that Jesus scolds the man and then throws him out.
It is no wonder that some ancient manuscripts read that at the opening of this incident Jesus, after being interrupted by this leper, is moved not with “pity” but with “anger.” That reading at least accords with Jesus’ overall demeanor here.
This is not unusual behavior for our Messiah. Jesus throws people out of a room (ekballo again) so he can heal a child, and then he “strictly ordered” witnesses of the miracle to keep quiet (Mark 5:40, 43). He and Peter get into a row, each rebuking the other (Mark 8:32-33). Jesus becomes exasperated with a crowd and his disciples: “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?” (Mark 9:19). He cursesa fig tree (Mark 11:13-14). He drives people out of the temple area (with a whip, according to John 2:15), overturning tables, and physically intimidating people to prevent their passing through (Mark 11:15-17).
Jesus’ attitude toward authorities is hardly respectful. He calls Herod a fox (Luke 13:32), and he castigates the scribes and Pharisees at length, mocking them as “blind guides” and “hypocrites” (Matt. 23:24-25), and practically curses them, saying, “You are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth” (Matt. 23:27).
Such incidents crop up again and again in the Jesus story. That story, in fact, is inexplicable without them. If Jesus was merely loving, compassionate, and kind—if Jesus was only nice—why did both Jews and Romans feel compelled to murder him?
Naturally enough, these are not passages upon which we meditate in morning devotions, nor do we memorize them for inspiration. Why bother when, if we just keep reading, we’ll find something edifying? And so, despite their prominence in the Gospels, these passages remain foreign to us. And there’s a reason for that.
Today we are adherents of the Religion of Niceness. In this religion, God is a benevolent grandfather who winks at human mistakes, and it goes without saying that he always understands—after all, it is human to err, divine to forgive.
In her essay “Nice Is Not the Point,” Marilyn Chandler McEntyre writes, “One of my husband’s finer moments in parenting came one day when, after he had uttered an unwelcome word of correction to a disgruntled child, he leaned down, looked her in the eye, and said, `Honey, this is what love looks like.’ Love, in that case, must have seemed to her a far cry from nice.”
When Jesus speaks sternly to the healed leper, when he castigates the Pharisees, when he rebukes Peter, it seems like a far cry from nice. But it isn’t a far cry from love. Simply put, when Jesus is not nice, he’s trying to get people to do the right thing.
Take the healed leper. The context of Jesus’ sternness is quickly made clear: “After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, saying to him, `See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter” (Mark 1:43-45).
Jesus realizes that the leper is grateful and that he wants to do something extraordinary for Jesus. But Jesus does not want the extraordinary. He wants the man to do what the day’s religious conventions (as outlined in Leviticus 14) told him to do. If the man really wanted to do something for Jesus, he would have played it by the book. This would have demonstrated to the authorities that Jesus was no law breaker (an accusation he knew he’d have to confront sooner or later), and this would have allowed Jesus to continue his ministry in towns throughout Galilee.
As commentator Ben Witherington puts it, the man healed of leprosy “bore witness about the wrong thing in the wrong way.” Thus Jesus could no longer enter towns and therefore synagogues–houses of worship and education, the richly symbolic place where he would have preferred to speak about the fulfillment of Israel. Now people began to mob him, not to hear his message so much as to be healed of their infirmities.
Variations of this theme—Jesus wanting others to do the right thing—are seen in Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees’ hypocrisy and Peter’s ignorance. Jesus is less than nice because people are often wicked and foolish, and they need to be jolted out of their stupor. Simply put: “The Lord disciplines those whom he loves” (Heb. 12:6).
Such confrontation is more than helping people do the right thing. It’s also about deepening our relationships with one another. Thus Paul tells the church in Colossae, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom” (Col. 3:16), in the same passage in which he urges them, “Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 3:14). There is a deeper unity, an intimacy that Paul longs for in the church, and that intimacy is brought about by a variety of behaviors such as “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Col. 3:12) but also by the courage to “admonish one another.”
Brother Mark Galli
Married couples know when their relationship moves into a deeper intimacy: it’s when they start arguing regularly. Indeed, many arguments have nothing to do with love, but a lot of them do. They often begin when one spouse has the uncomfortable duty of telling the other spouse, “You have done something wrong.”
This can be said in the nicest tone, but it rarely feels nice hearing it. And so it usually leads to a “conversation” that becomes less than nice. The spouse who starts this whole thing has to have a lot of courage, which is why most couples don’t do it until they are some distance into the relationship, when they are pretty sure the other is not going to walk out on them. They are willing to risk arguments because they know that unless the relationship moves into the not-nice stage, their love will never deepen.
Excerpt from Mark’s book:
Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Mean-Wild-Unexpected-Untamable/dp/0801071577
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Saints, we’re one day closer to Home, and Him! Love Him wholeheartedly!
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