Original Post

The Gospel Isn’t Offensive, We Are

Series
1. Introduction
2. Creation
3. Rebellion
4. Rescue
5. Re-Creation

I started this little series in response to a post I wrote on my belief that the Gospel is not offensive, we are. So often I hear Christians claiming the gospel is offensive, especially when their efforts at converting others go awry. It’s almost as if it’s an excuse to get him or her off the hook and that the world isn’t rejecting them but Jesus and His good news. Beyond using the “offensiveness” of the gospel as an excuse, though, I believe their belief is rooted in something much more unfortunate: Christians believe Jesus and His message is actually offensive. And the reason Christians believe this is because they’ve got the Story wrong, or at least it’s pieces are not understood properly.

I want to push against this popular notion a bit and say Jesus and His good news is entirely unoffensive. Jesus and His good news is unoffensive, not offensive. Rather than being unhelpful, unhealing, and repulsive, the life and teachings of Jesus point toward good news that is wholesome, healing, and attractive. Throughout His ministry people clung to Him, they loved being around Him and sought Him out to find restoration. Whether that restoration was social, economic, physical, or spiritual, everything for which people longed (and still long) was found in encountering Jesus the Christ.

But you miss this when you get the story wrong. And the reason the story is wrongly told and understood is because we start in the wrong place. Rather than beginning with Sin, the God’s Redemptive Story begins with Creation; Jesus’ gospel begins not with our screwed-upness but with the way creation was originally intended. As I said in my previous post:

The unoffensive gospel of Jesus begins with what God is taking all of Creation back to: Creation; Human nature is not fundamentally sinful, instead we should understand Humans as Eikons that are cracked an in need of reconciliation; and reconciliation means to restore something to the way it was originally intended to be at…the beginning.

So instead of being fundamentally sinful, all humans are deep down fundamentally Eikons or image bearers of God. That image, though, is cracked and in need of restoration, a job only God could accomplish.

But, you ask, why ARE things so screwed-up? Why aren’t we the way we are suppose to be? Jeremy, we do sin, so how does that play into God’s Story? And this brings us to the next Act in the Divine Story of Redemption: Rebellion. Rather than understanding human nature in traditional terms that place Sin at the center of our and God’s Story, we should reunderstand humans as rebellious and broken Eikons, rather than hopeless Sinners.

Let me make something clear at the beginning: with all of this talk about Rebellion I am not trying to play down the fact humans partner with Sin. Sin and Sinning is a part of the human condition, and is described so in God’s Sacred Text to Humanity called the Bible. But while I believe Sin is a part of Creation and Humanity, I believe we need to reunderstand the Sin concept to be Rebellion: Eikons Rebelled against God and His Rhythm and still Rebel against both.

The problem with traditional concepts of Sin are that those descriptions are entirely legal, which also relate to more legal understandings of atonement (how sin is forgiven by God). Not to name names, but Calvinists and most evangelicals who hold to a penal substitutionary theory of atonement begin with Sin in their version of the gospel, because, as they say, Humans are fundamentally Sinful. They’ve violated and broken a moral, legal code of God, which required a substitute for God’s wrathful judgement. The substitute was provided by Jesus who takes the place of the “violator” in God’s Cloudy Courtroom and is sent away to die by Bailiff St. Peter. That death pays the penalty for humans (usually a select few, like the Christian, their family, and their friends) which purchases them a place in God’s Cosmic Castle.

Now, of course, I’m being a little playful in my description of penal substitutionary atonement. I do appreciate it as a tool for understanding how God forgives our sin, but the problem with this theory of atonement is that it assumes sin is a legal problem, a violation of a code of conduct problem. Sin, however, is entirely relational, which is why the word Rebellion is a better descriptor for how we relate to God’s Rhythm of Life.

Sin is a relational problem, not a legal problem. God’s Rhythm of Life is entire relational, not legal. Jesus summed up this entire Rhythm this way: love God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength; love those around you as your love yourself. Thus, Sin is not loving God and not loving other people. And in order to Sin, you must do so in the context of relationships.

Sin is entirely relational.

But, you protest, what about the Law? What about Roy’s 10 Commandments? CLEARLY we violate some sort of Theistic Code of Conduct!

Sorry, Charlie, but the Law was given AFTER His people were already in relationship with God post-Covenant. And while covenants in our mind have a sort of contractual ring to them, this was far more relational. The Law was not a code of conduct, but an outline of how the Children of Israel were to live as a people set apart for relationship with God. They were already in relationship with Him because He chose them, and now God showed them how they were to love God and others. At this point I can’t nuance the Law (which is composed of 4 codes that related to different people and different situations), but in the most basic sense even the Law was entire relational and violation of the Law (Sin) was an act of un-love.

What’s more: at the foundation of the world we were created to exist in an eternal relationship with God and live according to a certain pattern, a certain rhythm. At our creation we were designed to exist in an eternal Dance with God and move according to His Rhythm. But we choose to dance our own Dance, we chose to move according to a foreign Rhythm. We abandoned God at the alter and chose to pattern the steps of our Life after they Rhythm of Self.

But the thing is I think people inherently know that’s the case, that things are not the way they are meant to be. If Eternity is grafted into the very being of all humans by the very fact they are crafted after God, wouldn’t it make sense that they would inherently know that there is an Other that is beyond them, a Story that is bigger than them, and another world just waiting–no NEEDING–to burst forth through the seams of this good, but terribly screwed-up one? And if this is what people long for, a new world and a new life, then wouldn’t they embrace it if it was offered to them?

This is why I love the Gospels: they are a collection of stories of real-life screwed-up people who encounter Jesus and find the restoration they’ve been longing for all their lives because Jesus offers them Life in all of it’s fullness. I wrote in my last post that throughout the entire ministry of Jesus you see a Man who spent 3 years wading through the cracked stories of Eikons and declaring the “kingdom has invaded your story!” He confronted their Rebellion and the affects of Rebellion with Life. And when people walked away from that encounter they were Re-Created. What the hell is offensive about that?

Who is the Jesus we are showing people, what is the message we are telling?

Are we confronting Rebellion with Life, Rescue, and Re-Creation? Or are we confronting Rebellion with more Rebellion, with the sulfuric scent of Death?

Folks, humans are not without hope. That, of course, is the entire reason for Advent and the reason for tomorrow: the celebration of the invasion of the God-with-us-God in the Person of Jesus to rescue all of Creation from the results of Rebellion. Nestled in the scream coming from the swaddling-clothed Babe is the cry, “I can save you!” not “you are sinners who are screwed!” When the host of angels burst forth into the same time-space reality of the shepherds, they proclaimed wholeness and shalom to all of humanity, whom God’s love and affection still rests despite our rebellion.

While Rebellion brought Jesus here to earth, it is not the point of His message. Rescue is at the center of His invasion and Re-Creation is His banner. And that is a good, unoffensive gospel, indeed.

Tomorrow, may we celebrate Rescue even as we groan with Creation over Rebellion. May we fight Rebellion in the lives of those around us by showing them a better Way of Being Human. May we fight the systems and dark powers of Evil that wage war against the Way of Jesus. And finally, may we fight Rebellion in our own lives through the power of the Holy Spirit whom God provides to empower us to dance with the Divine Community of Self-Giving Lovers according to the Rhythm of God.