I Knew Jesus before He Was a Christian . . .

            I’ve just completed a book you might want to read. Its title is I Knew Jesus before He Was a Christian . . . and I Liked Him Better Then. Yes, the title is meant to get your attention. But it is also meant to be a very serious statement.

            The Jesus one meets in the Gospels is humble and appealing, engaging and life-transforming. He is God among us who rescues, heals, and empowers. But something happened in the fourth century that changed everything. The Roman Emperor Constantine took control of the church and morphed the Body of Christ into a hierarchical institution that looked more like a government or a business.

            From that time forward, people have had to form their opinions of a warm and generous Jesus through their experiences of an often-imperious church. Thus it has come about that the greatest single cause of atheism in the world is a church that has been at various times materialistic, acquisitive, racist, predatory, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise incongruous in character to its founder.

            Contrary to the advice of one cynic who cried “If you love Jesus, burn the church!”, my appeal is for the church to find ways to connect with Jesus. Identify with Jesus. Reform itself into Jesus’ image. Become what it was at first.

            The Christian religion simply is not serving the spiritual lives of people very well these days. If you doubt that claim, perhaps you should know that the fastest-growing segment of religious affiliation these days is neither Catholic, Protestant, Jew, nor Muslim but “None.” The report was titled “American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population.” Yet only 7% say they are atheists.

            My hunch is that some – if not most of these no-religion people – are anything but men and women running away from God but persons who see church as too bland, too tame, too unlike their titular founder. They are looking for a challenge to their faith that is worthy of being associated with Jesus Christ.

            My fear is that what we have come to call Christianity has blurred our vision of Jesus. If that is true, we need to dig beneath the debris of religious rituals and conventions that have accumulated over centuries to reclaim and live the vibrant gospel that turned the world upside down – and could do so yet again.

            I knew Jesus before he was a (post-Constantine, big-shot, uppity, privileged, hypercritical, disparaging, dismissive) Christian. It was back in the days that he was a servant to servants and said we could find God in that sort of simplicity. It was when he stepped between rock-throwers and guilty-as-sin people about to be stoned by them. It was in the times that he laughed, went to parties, held babies, touched blind people, hung out with outcasts, and otherwise showed humans the true nature of God. That God is love. That God is decent and holy, without being priggish about it. And I liked him better then!

            If you get a chance to read the book, I would welcome your feedback.

To purchase the book click here.