Wanted: A Weak Church

I was reading the new issue of Relevent (they were free at Jubilee) and there is an interesting conversation with some young Christian voices. And one question is about challenges facing the Church in the future and one respondent-Mark Driscoll-is concerned about the tendency of emergent churches to make Jesus into "a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with alot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life" he contraists this to Revelation where "Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in His hand and the committment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up."

Stop the presses! We've been making a horrible mistake all this time Jesus was not scorned, beaten, and killed and he most definitely did not cry to his Abba in the garden. All this time we've been worshiping a God we could beat up.

(I know nothing about Mr. Driscoll so don't read any more into me using his quote as a jumping off point except that I think it represents a dangerous line of thought that permeates the Church.)

Jesus continues to this day to challenge our thinking as to who God is just as he challenged the thinking as to what a Messiah was.

"Several of Jesus’ close comrades were probably Zealots, members of an anti-imperialist underground movement. Judas’ surname suggests that he may have been one of them, which makes his treachery rather more intelligible: perhaps he sold out his leader in bitter disenchantment, recognising that he was not, after all, the Messiah. Messiahs are not born in poverty; they do not spurn weapons of destruction; and they tend to ride into the national capital in bullet-proof limousines with police outriders, not on a donkey." ~Terry Eagleton

Remember the question was "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" The answer really was no. Because Jesus was not good as they describe it he was a hick, a geek. "what carpenter took the time to read the scriptures as much as he obviously did".

Jesus was not tough or heroic he was a failure he fought the law and the law won.

Why do we now ask different of God? Why do think that God didn't accurately reveal God's self? Did not accurately reveal what it means to be a human in realtionship to God?

The Church is to obsessed with strength, masculinity, and success. At our best we make space for the ill, the handicapped, the screwups but we do not celebrate them, to thank God that we are allowed to receive God's body (each other). The Church forgets that we are the weak ones. Strength is not a value the Bible or the early Church prized very highly. It's too assocaited with hubris it is too connected to the good as the world measures it.