Fairy Tale Jesus, Part Two

A year ago, I talked about how presentations of the gospel sometimes makes Easter seem like a fictional story, and not a very interesting one at that. Once upon a time, Jesus did this, said that, rose from the dead, and everyone who believes in him lives happily ever after. We all know the ending. Yawn. No surprises here.

That’s why I think that the gospel is not just a three-point outline of sin sacrifice salvation. That might be necessary to make it fit on a tract, but it misses the beauty of the story that goes throughout the whole Old and New Testament. We lose the building of tension, the solutions that looked like they might work until the people failed God time and time again, the hints of a future Savior. We miss the sheer impact of the crucifixion and resurrection as plot twists when we repeat them over and over out of any historical or Biblical context.

And so our kids miss it too. And we wonder why they leave in church after they stop getting free pizza from youth group events. They know the stories. Noah and the ark, David killing Goliath, Daniel in the lions’ den. And they know it’s important to be honest, kind, and obedient. But do they know the God of the stories? Do they know the overwhelming love that motivates right actions?

Last week, I suggested that it’s important to teach kids that the stories in the Bible really happened, and not just by saying that phrase somewhere in the lesson or storybook. This week, I’m going to make the claim that there’s something else we should teach kids: This points to Jesus.

That doesn’t mean stretching symbolism to figure out how to tie in Baalam’s donkey to a New Testament parable. But it does mean looking at the stories of the Bible as steps in the process of redemption that came to fulfillment in Jesus. There’s a reason this story was included in the Bible. What is it supposed to teach us about ourselves, God, or what’s coming next?

The Orthodox Heretic

Today, I posted on Facebook about how I accidentally completed an online doctrinal questionnaire that I didn’t really need to fill out for the job I was applying for. Doing so, though, helped me think about some really important things, so I thought I’d put some excerpts here.

These are not the actual words I wrote. I sounded smarter, gave examples of how this impacted my life, and generally tried not to pick any fights. What I have here is the spirit behind what I wrote for many of these.

They’re important things to think about…even if you don’t have to fill out any applications in the near future.

The Trinity: “We believe in one God — eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent existing as three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in nature, attributes, power, and glory.”

You want a God that makes perfect sense? You’ll have to invent one. And believe me, you won’t end up with something that even remotely resembles the God of Christianity.

Also, Jeremy Begbie’s illustration of the Trinity as a three-note chord, which is quite literally the only metaphor for the Trinity I’ve ever heard that doesn’t wind up as some kind of heresy if you think about it too hard.

Jesus’ Nature: “We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ… is both true God and true man.”

Basically, when you talk about Jesus’ nature, you’re saying, “This is true…and so is this other thing that’s pretty much the exact opposite.” And I love that.

Lots of people make fun of these type of paradoxes in the faith, but see my answer to the Trinity question above. That doesn’t mean that we should just shrug off any questions we have about our faith without trying to understand them. It just means that we need to have the humility to say we might not be able to find all the answers.

Fairy Tale Jesus, Part One

"Am I teaching kids to behave Christian-ly without teaching them Christianity?"

So wonders Phil Vischer, creator of VeggieTales, a delightful series of Bible stories that he now says falls short of what it means to teach children about God. (Watch the interview. DO IT. This guy is seriously my hero.)

He points out that a lot of times, when it comes to writing for children, we hand them a moral instead of a story.

There’s a place for that. Sermon illustrations, Aesop’s fables, and coloring book captions are too short to get much into character development and plot. If the purpose is to drive home a point, illustrate a concept, or briefly refer to something else, it’s okay to have less than a story.

It’s also okay for stories to contain a moral of sorts. Think about your favorite stories as a child, from your fairy tale and very hungry caterpillar days to the chapter book series you read in later years. Most of them probably taught you things about the way people should act, the dangers of being greedy, or the importance of teamwork. Those are all good things.

But a moral by itself is not a story. It’s a fragment of one. Put into proper context, morals are the powerful underlying messages that can change our lives. By themselves, they’re pretty weak and unconvincing, left looking nervously around for narrative, foreshadowing, characters, and conflict to back them up and make them worthwhile.

The Problem of Judas

Judas Iscariot has always fascinated me. Every Easter, when I write blog posts and skits and devotionals, I keep coming back to him over and over again.

Sometimes, I think about how I would view him if I were one of the people who knew him best: his fellow disciples. I picture them, huddled, frightened on that dark Saturday, together but feeling very alone. They were thinking about Jesus, of course. Of what to do next. But I bet Judas’ name came up too. And I picture myself there and wonder what I would say.

If I am Matthew, I would be nervously cracking my knuckles, thinking—maybe saying—“I knew it all along. Remember? I told you. I knew he was stealing from us. The numbers didn’t add up. And when I asked about it, whenever I said anything about it, he’d just make some snide comment about how the Roman’s financial management system wasn’t the same as good, honorable Jewish math and maybe that was my problem. Like I was still just the resident tax collector, the friendly local cheat.”

But what I wouldn’t say, what I would just wonder, quietly, was: And look what happened to him. Did it start that way, you think? Just a few cut corners, a bit of pocketed change? With tiny justifications and self-righteous denials?

Maybe, all along, he wasn’t planning to betray Jesus. Maybe he just wanted things his way. Wanted to be in control, to not have to trust God. And every compromise got easier.

I know that feeling. If Jesus hadn’t called me away…. Face it, I was the friendly local cheat. What if I had been given responsibility for the money bag? Old habits die hard.

It could have been me.

Sabbath Reflections: Mythologizing Easter

Take a second and think about how you would tell the story of the first Thanksgiving in a few sentences. (Yes this is a post about Easter. No you did not enter into a time-warp that took you back to November. Why would you even think such a silly thing?)

I actually did an activity like this at a Thanksgiving party last year, where three different groups performed skits to summarize the event. Here were the main plot points that pretty much everyone included:

• Pilgrims flee religious persecution of some kind.
• They travel to the New World on the Mayflower.
• They land on a rock.
• Lots of them die in the winter.
• The kind Indians help them plant corn.
• They celebrate with a feast.
• And they all lived happily ever after.

Even some of these details were fuzzy to a few people who will remain unnamed. (I overheard one conversation involving whether the Pilgrims arrived before or after Columbus.) But that was the general flow of the summaries.

Everyone probably knew that the Indians who attended the first Thanksgiving didn’t say, “Me eat corn now.” They probably didn’t think that all of the traditional dishes—sweet potatoes with marshmallows?—were served at that feast. And, if I had asked, they could probably have explained how the Pilgrims would have viewed the modern celebration of the holiday (I’m sure they’d love the parade, especially those Rockettes) given their religious beliefs.

But the picture that comes into our heads is the cartoon version, the coloring book plot that was drilled into our heads since we were young enough to wear paper-bag Indian costumes and newspaper pilgrim hats.

In our culture, Thanksgiving is considered a real, historical event…but that’s not what we think of first. We’ve made Thanksgiving into a myth.

To Christians, Jesus’ resurrection is considered a real, historical event…but that’s often not what we think of first, because we’ve made Easter into a myth.

Always Winter, Never Christmas

One of the worst realities I can think of is the setting of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: always winter, but never Christmas.

When I first read the book as an eight-year-old, I thought immediately about the fact that Mr. Tumnus and the beavers never had presents or carols or a Christmas trees with those bulbs that make your nose look big when you hold them up to your face.

But the Narnians needed more than the outward trappings of the holidays. They were longing for things that they could hardly remember, but that they somehow knew were missing: hope, joy, and peace.

Like Narnia, our world was once frozen in always winter, never Christmas. But then, two things happened.

Sabbath Reflections: Writing in a Minor Key

Thanksgiving is over. This means I can officially write blog posts about Christmas.

If you weren’t aware of this deadline, it’s probably because you are either surrounded by happy-go-lucky elves who started playing carols after Labor Day or Grinches who might work up a tiny scrap of holiday cheer by Christmas Eve. Maybe.

However, let me assure any doubters out there that this is a legitimate, if somewhat arbitrary measurement. So here we go.

One of my favorite Christmas carols is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” You know why?

Because it’s in a minor key.

Sabbath Reflections: Woody the Cowboy and Jesus

I learned a lot about writing a good protagonist by watching Pixar’s Toy Story trilogy, which you should go see if you haven’t already. The way Woody develops over the course of the movies led me to a revelation about the nature of heroes: all heroes, not just the ones in corny chick flicks, are motivated by some kind of love.

Obviously, that love looks different depending on the characters and their relationships to others in the movie. It could be a father who loves his son enough to cross and entire ocean to bring him back home (Finding Nemo), or an adorable robot who loves a stranger enough to protect her even when she shows no interest in him in return (Wall-E), or a superhero who loves truth and justice and the generic citizenry of the world enough to risk his life multiple times to save people (The Incredibles).