Why Christ Matters

by

Practicing Faith

Many notable Christians on the theological left – men like Robin Meyers or William Barclay before him – have rejected the divinity of Jesus, often because the synoptic Gospels seem pretty unsure about who or what Jesus was. Further, the miracles that the Gospels attribute to Jesus seem implausibly pre-scientific; since a purely empirical worldview rejects the miraculous, the miracles must be myths that illustrate Jesus’s compassion, rather than Christ’s divinity. Thus, Jesus is seen as simply a particularly wise sage; more a God-follower than God.

I have no interest in developing an apologetic defense of these criticisms. Instead, I write to discuss why it matters that Jesus was Christ and why we might choose to believe the radically implausible, that God so loved the world that God became a man so that he might live and suffer in solidarity and compassion with us.

There are several reasons why we might choose to believe that Jesus was God-incarnate, but all of them revolve around the idea that our theology has consequences. That is, what we believe about God affects the way we live. This is not the same as saying that we have to cling to orthodoxy as a sort of heavenly admissions ticket, but instead that the suffering and brokenness of the world is so profound that it can only be healed through a theology that inspires radical courage and love. To me, the belief that God became incarnate to preach the Sermon on the Mount, to love, and to suffer, is such a theology.

So, what might we lose if we demote Jesus from Christ to spiritual sage? First, we lose the image of the crucified God. If Jesus is Christ, the crucifixion represents not only the torture and execution of a man, it also represents the suffering that God is willing to endure on behalf of His children. If Jesus is Christ, God so loved us that He was willing to be tortured to death in order to live in solidarity with us. In this view, God suffers because we suffer. God suffers not just as some bizarre festival of atonement, but to understand our suffering; Jesus is able to sit with us in our desolation because he has been there first. Conversely, if Jesus is not Christ, God is not willing or able to die for you. Without Jesus as Christ, God is separate, above, and pristine; with Jesus as Christ, God is with you, on earth, enmeshed in the dirt and the brokenness of life.

Second, if Jesus was not Christ, his nonviolence in the face of the crucifixion loses its meaning. According to Matthew, when Jesus was arrested a scuffle breaks out, a sword is drawn, and an ear is lost. Jesus responds to this violence by denouncing the bloodshed and asking, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53). Jesus then goes willingly with his persecutors and prays for their forgiveness. But this is only noteworthy if Jesus is Christ. If Jesus is merely a revolutionary sage, then his acquiescence to his execution is no more noteworthy than when any other criminal goes to the gallows without violence; it is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that he lacked the power to change his situation and that violent struggle would only make it worse. Yet if Jesus is Christ, if he was correct when he said he could order up the heavenly cavalry, then he has power and agency. He has the ability to change his fate through violence and he chooses not to. If Jesus is Christ, his nonviolence is a choice.

Finally, the Gospels are radical not because of their theological claims, but because of their social claims. Jesus asks us to love our enemies, to give all we have to the poor, to always treat others as we want to be treated, to repay violence with peace, and to pick up our cross and follow him. Virtually everything Jesus asks us to do is difficult and costly, and if we are being honest, anyone who follows it will likely end up broke, betrayed, and dead – much like Jesus. If Jesus is not Christ, following his advice is a really bad idea.

Of course, this is why all of us fail to follow Jesus’s teachings. We don’t actually believe that Jesus was Christ. If we did, we wouldn’t support a government which has, in the past three decades has killed people in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Afghanistan again, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq again, Panama, Iran and Libya again. Instead, we might love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). If we did believe Jesus was Christ, we wouldn’t spend so much of our income on junk we don’t need while 800 million people go hungry. Instead, we might feed the hungry (Matthew 25:35). If we did believe that Jesus was Christ, we wouldn’t be arguing about border walls and “s---hole” countries. Instead, we would be welcoming the stranger (Matthew 25:35). In other words, we know that none of us actually believes that Jesus was Christ because, while we call him “Lord, Lord,” we don’t do what he told us to do.

What, then, are we to do? We could accept that we can’t really follow all of Jesus’s teachings and continue to pat ourselves on the back for trying, content in the knowledge that Jesus wasn’t really God anyway, only a sage with some good, maybe even sacred, ideas. Or we could choose to believe that God loved us so much that He became incarnate; that God lived and suffered with us to comfort us in our desolation, and that God Himself offered us a better way to live together. Such a faith sounds fantastical, but it is also beautiful, and if actually implemented, would make for a more peaceful earth.

Brian Snyder is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Louisiana State University and a member of First United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, La.