by Zach Kincaid
The prophetic is silent. Its heyday is now rained out in an unbaptized haze of tolerance run amuck. O'Connor warned us: we really want a Christ without all that crucifixion talk. We want everyone carrying around open minds on top of shoulders broad enough to narrow nothing, and arms that carry no punch of truth, no signs of crosses, no healed withered-ness in its hands.
We are our own wilderness where God cannot be found. No desert is needed, and we don't want any magical water rocks. None of that. We want to thirst after self-righteousness and navel-gazing into the divine hole that is our self made outer-space. Shaw's Superman, one might say. His second coming is announced by the genes we sequence and the health spas that prolong the shallow lives of our hollowed hearts eaten away by what no doctor can fix.
We're dying in Bono's "one love" world. It's hip, it's sunglass-wearing cool to believe in a Jesus who parades all those platitudes that bring in the multitudes.
We're dying in an ahistoric time. The historicity of a Jesus who actually performed miracles from spitballs or voice messages is naive. Resurrection from the dead. Maybe, but why defend it. Just use it to talk about social action like those preachers who forgot how to preach. So enlightened. So freeing.
We're dying in a needy time. Aren't we? So shut up about how we should view Jesus and just work for him or for some other motivation. Isn't that the greater commission? Forget the great one. This one's better. Let's push folks up the ladder of seen success. It's much more solid than your theological jello.
Be practical. Be tolerant. Be open. Just be. Leave out the "lieve." It's allusive and elusive, which makes it illusive. So stop that triune untruth and just imagine peace and it'll happen. All the people. Harmony. Besides that, I'm not the only one. Great, back to that one nonsense (and I like U2 and realize the saving phrase, "but we're not the same").
What's the sieve that leaks the Truth from the trash cans that are filled with these pseudo-philosophies?
It's the Gospel. It's all there. Jesus sends the multitudes away because of his difficult teachings. He says he is the way, truth, and life. He says that no one comes to his Father except through him. He demonstrates love and it is always redemptive and not simply social. Even the teaching of the sheep and goats is followed by the commission to his disciples to go and preach the good news and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Discount the resurrection and you remove any label of "Christian." It's only through the cross and his bodily resurrection that we are saved and we are made right with God. It's the central Truth that springs forth a whole new creation. Forget it or abandon it and all is lost (namely you).
Jesus never makes it easy. He never lightens our load to a yoke that doesn’t carry a cross. Rather, he says the Holy Spirit will comfort us until he returns to claim those who walk the narrow way that leads to salvation. May we run down that path and seek the salt and light that only is fulfilled by the maker and keeper of both.