Thesis 14: Jesus Changes the Whole Story

Thesis 14: Jesus Changes the Whole Story

Amazing how few churches who claim to be biblical fail to follow the Bible. At least, they ignore and fail to prioritize the most important part: the part with Christ in it.

Sure, the entire text is inspired and valuable for teaching and learning, but we’re failing to view it as a whole — a changed and dynamic whole — against the life, deeds, and words of Christ.

Simply put (though you’d never know it by the way conservatives have embraced the eye-for-an-eye bit buried somewhere in the first part), we need to stop treating the Old Testament as though it has authority by itself. We need to stop dumping the genocidal hell and brimstone that stains the old part onto new truths. We need to stop quoting Leviticus to answer 2024 questions. (See also: entirely missing the point of the Sodom and Gomorrah story.)

The Old Testament can no longer stand on its own, which is why we call ourselves Christian, and not Jewish (duh, and yet how many “Christians” seem to hold Israel higher than Christ…).

If you want, you can live in an attempt to follow all the rules and regulations in the Old Testament. The late (and sublime) Rachel Held Evans did it, and lampooned it, and wrote a book chronicling the ridiculousness of it all. It’s a worthwhile read for a number of reasons (she could really write: Searching for Sunday might be the best book for faithful questioners ever), but what it does most clearly is outline just how archaic and useless all those old laws were. And hilarious when applied to today.

And let’s be honest, God’s not very nice in the OT: one of his many names should be Ethnic Cleanser. Without Christ, he’s just a very grumpy Sky-Grandpappy who wipes out whole races of people with alarming frequency, dangling his “chosen” people like marionettes who never know whether they’ll get into heaven, but can pretty much count on getting slaughtered by some greedy king installed by, well, you know who.

We also need to stop treating the epistles, acts, and apocalyptic portions of the New Testament the same way. Yes, everything past John was coloured by Christ: the epistles are an honest attempt to advise individual churches in Christ’s name, the acts of the apostles give us a glimpse into the day to day of spreading the word, and the apocalyptic stuff is there to warn us and inspire us to think about the eternal consequences of our thoughts and deeds.

But so much of it was written for specific folks at specific times that it doesn’t make sense to apply it letter by letter to our lives today. One of the most helpful comments I came across while trying to understand the NT was that as we read, we MUST remember that we’re reading someone else’s mail, logbooks, and visions. None of the writers of the NT had any idea that their letters were going to become scripture (if you squint and hold your breath, you can try and interpret it that way, but it’s pretty wispy stuff), and so we shouldn’t apply them in that spirit.

Paul’s problematic words, for example, can’t be laid over today’s issues with a convenient “A-Ha!” Poor Paul: racist, misogynistic, stubborn, Roman Paul. He was so weighed down by his upbringing and persecutory baggage that he didn’t have much patience for anyone other than men who spoke and acted like him. Keeping women from leading because Paul probably hated women would be like cutting out our brains because someone else didn’t like our hair.

Should we ignore everything other than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Of course not. But we should hold every passage not in those books against the mission and ministry of Christ before we declare it to be Truth, doctrine, or orthodoxy.

Abortion, LGBTQS+ rights, church leadership, temptation, sexuality, and the dignity of the vulnerable and needy look a hell of a lot different when seen through the words and actions of Christ. (And I think we’d be amazed at how grumpy Jesus would get at most of the bible writers…I don’t think Paul actually liked him very much, either.)

The existence and ministry of Jesus changes the story. The whole fucking thing. Even the actions and words of God must be viewed differently when we embrace the incarnation. And honestly, although we can’t ignore God, we follow Jesus because of that change towards loving and serving folks towards salvation. The Holy Spirit’s entire existence depends on it, too: it was given purely to help us accomplish those things. (No, not to foam at the mouth, speak in unintelligible gibberish in church, or get “slain” in any-fucking-way, all of which miss the point entirely.)

We follow Christ. We live like Christ. We love and serve our neighbours and gather in Church so we can help each other keep doing those things. The rest of the story is just that: helpful story. Not gospel. Not Jesus.

Keywords: Jesus Changes the Whole Story; Faith; Deconstruction; Religion; Christian; Christianity; Church; Sin; Corruption; Scandal; Bible; Abuse; God; Jesus; Stewardship