Jamin Bradley

Part of the reason Jesus is so easy for Christians to get behind is that he lived in a different time than ours. His social situations, his enemies, his critiques, his laws, his ways of life, and so on, are all foreign to us. While the story is historical, it almost strikes us as a piece of science fiction or fantasy. The elements feel familiar, but without studying the deep lore, we miss the point.

We don’t always pay attention to the deep lore. Heck, we don’t always pay attention to the shallow lore. Despite the fact that the gospels were written to give us many glimpses into the things Jesus cared about, we often center our attention on the cross and its saving power for us. The problem is, when we don’t go deeper than this, Jesus becomes a hero that we remake in our image. We assume we already know his social situations, his enemies, his critiques, his laws, his ways of life, and so on. We’re his followers—how could we be wrong?

But Jesus was a prophet. And prophets always have the same dilemma: they are hated by the people of their time when their words matter most, and beloved by the people of later times who have removed themselves from direct contact with the words. We have to face the fact that we now live in this dilemma, which means that, had we been present when Jesus said the things he said, we should assume we would have been the ones that wouldn’t have listened.

Of course, no one ever wants to suspect they’re that person. “If I lived during the times of slavery, I would have been one of the abolitionists,” we say, always thinking we would have been in the small percentage of woke people back then. But again, we should gather that if we’re living in the deep lore, someone like Jesus would only upset us when he tried to wake us up out of our sleep. Indeed, Jesus showed us that the religious leaders of his time acted hypocritically in this way when he called them out, saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.”

As per usual, Jesus’ harshest words and actions were reserved for the religious folk: the ones who were supposed to understand him best, and yet didn’t recognize him at all. Yet instead of becoming introspective around Jesus’ critiques and wondering how we might be out of line, we aim Jesus’ harshest words at people we deem “outsiders” and “sinners”—the people Jesus spent most of his time dining with and talking compassionately to.

Why? Because we live in the cross, but not in the person. We are too prideful to think we could be wrong about him and what he would say or do. He might have been provocative and prophetic back then, but today we want him to be exactly what we think he should be like, as we shove him back inside our Jesus-box.

But the Jesus who was, is the Jesus who still is, and is to come. If he was provoking people back then, he should still be provoking us today. And if we don’t want to be the people who killed him back then, then we have to put down our defenses now when he tells us to let him out of the box.