Some Things I've Learned About Jesus

Here are some things I've learned about Jesus that might be a suprise to Christians... and that many will try to explain away and give all kinds of reasons why Christians today shouldn't live their lives the same way. (Sorry, the cynical side of me had to add the second line.)

#1. Jesus hung out with broken, dirty, sinful people a lot more than he did with those who were religious. The ordinary, don't yet have it together, sinful people were the ones he chose to be his disciples, the ones to carry his message to all the world. They are the ones he broke religious tradition to eat with. They are the ones he offered grace and love to when the religious were offering contempt and judgment. Jesus doesn't seem to have very much at all to say to or about the religious leaders that was good. Instead, he actually reserved his harshest criticisms for them. (And by the way, realizing that totally changed the way I live my life as a Christian.) Jesus lived his entire life this way, but who do most Christians hang out with exclusively? Yep, other Christians. (I do it too, and it sucks.) We do so to try to become more like Jesus, but the scary thing is that we might actually become less like Jesus the more we hang around other Christians.

#2. Jesus drank alcohol. He also turned water into wine so others could drink. Paul encouraged Timothy to drink "a little wine" for his stomach. Many Christians, though, view drinking alcohol as one of those big sins, right up there with murder and voting Democrat.

#3. Jesus spent way more time teaching about how to live a life that pleases God than he did about escaping the fires of hell. Sorry, but it's the truth. I've long said that not wanting to go to hell is a pretty crappy reason to follow Christ. Not that anybody should want to go to hell, but becoming a Christian because you prefer cooler temperatures is like eating cake for the protein from the one egg in it.

#4. Jesus spent way more time teaching about the Kingdom of God on earth than about Heaven. Sorry again, but it's the truth also. It makes our Christian life here and now a whole lot more challenging, too...

#5. Jesus taught that more than anything else... more than our obedience to a set of religious rules, more than our money, more than looking "like a Christian," more than our words or deeds or anything else, what God really wants is us. He wants all of us in every way. He wants us to know him more intimately than we know even ourselves, and everything that God has done from the beginning of time till now has been his work to bring us back to him. If you really think about it, that gives us a remarkable freedom.

One of the pretty radical parts of Jesus message is that he didn't call us to live our lives in the black and white, as we so often try to do. He lived his life in the vast uncertainty of the grey, and he calls us to do it too. Lately, I have become more and more ok with not having all the answers, not having everything sorted out, and not really caring too much if other Christians disagree with me on some issues. I'm excited about jumping into the vast grey abyss of life with Jesus. It's sometimes scary, rarely easy, but it's an awesome journey, and I invite you to join me.