Church Corner

Who do people say Jesus is? Who do you say Jesus is? That is an age-old question. It is the same question Jesus asked his disciples shortly before he was arrested, tried and crucified. Then, just like now, people had many different ideas of who and what Jesus was.

Some thought he was Elijah or John the Baptist reincarnated. Others expected him to fit into their mold of what a messiah should be and do. For most, that meant being a political or military leader that would free the Jews from the oppression of Rome’s rule. To the religious leaders of his day, he was an enigma – a nettling thorn in their side. They could see that he drew big crowds of followers, that he didn’t legalistically follow all the detailed Old Testament laws, that he was constantly criticizing their hypocrisies and that he taught with an integrity and authority that their superficial piety lacked. They hated him and looked for ways to get rid of him. Eventually they succeeded – or so they thought.

Today, people hold a myriad of different ideas about Jesus. Some say he was a great moral teacher. Some say he was a committed zealot who was willing to die for a cause – no matter how misguided or deluded that cause might be. Some recognize him as a great historical figure who changed the face of history. Orthodox Christianity holds that he was and is the eternal Son of God: fully human and fully divine.

Who do you say Jesus was? Who do you think Jesus is? Dan Kimball, a leader in the emerging church movement and a pastor and author, suggests that emerging generations today – that is, people who tend to fall into the age category of 18 to 35, generally have a positive sense of who Jesus is and what he taught. Even so, we see church membership and attendance overall declining, particularly among young people.

In his book “They Like Jesus but not the Church,” Kimball suggests that there is a huge disconnect between what many American people think of Jesus and what they think of his Church (large C meaning the Christian Church in general). Why? The disconnect is a result of Christians being preoccupied with staying in the safety and comfort of their own church programs, services and experiences. It is a bubble that we use to insulate ourselves from the pressures of a world that is rapidly changing and, could be argued, is quickly becoming a post-Christian culture. As emerging generations look at the church in our country, they see something different than the values they understand Jesus to have taught.

They may believe in Jesus – at least to the extent they think they understand him – but don’t see the relevance or value of the church. Whoever’s statistics you choose to go by, it is estimated that here in the Northwest, somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the population do not go to church. Elsewhere in the world, Christianity is rapidly growing. In the United States and in the West, that is not the case. Has the church lost its voice by living in the bubble?

Groucho Marx once sent a letter of resignation to a Hollywood club he had joined: “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” Many people feel that way about the church. Someone with perhaps more credibility – Mahatma Gandhi – admitted that “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. You are so unlike your Christ.”

Jesus prayed to the heavenly father that God would not take his followers out of the world but that they be kept from the evil one (John 17:15).

I agree with Kimball that it is time for Christians to escape the safety of the Christian bubble and engage the world; engage culture in meaningful, helpful ways. The reality is that we who have taken Christ’s name and are called to bear witness to him in the world, may be the only evidence of God’s true love for the world that some people see. One person wrote, “People outside the church read Christians, not the Bible.” What’s the message they get when they read us?