post credit from r/dankchristianmemes
In the first and previous edition of this I forgot to mention my credentials to actually create my authority to talk about church matters. As follows:
-Both parents are pastors. Yes. Mother and father. They're a mean tag team duo.
-Both parents are hispanic pastors.
-Attended Baptist school for years in Staten Island
-Pentecostal undergraduate
-Methodist graduate school
My background is church heavy. These pastor's kid rant are coming from a deep insider in this community.
I. Jesus' divinity doesn't override His humanity. It's not a get out of jail free card.
Just because He's Jesus doesn't mean He gets a pass solely because He is fully divine. Yes I believe that He is very God of very God but the gospels play coy about His humanity and divinity. Mark seems to read Him as human with a hue of divinity, John makes Him to be more divine than human, and Luke and Matthew have subtle moments of divergence from Mark (considering that 92% of Mark is in Matthew and 87% of Mark is in Luke, I can't imagine they disagreed on a lot of what they read in Mark but the devil yes a bad pun is in the details with Luke and Matthew's opinions, they're sometimes words apart in the gospels). The only reason we can talk about Jesus in any way is because He's human, the fact that we can't understand Him fully is because He's divine. There are moments in the gospels that will forever have no good explanation to them but be written off as "He's Jesus". He doesn't get off easy just because He's the son of God. We place a lot of stock in His divinity because it's easy to do. As if that's a demonstration of faith. It isn't. It's a demonstration of laziness to learning about how messy it is to believe in Jesus and how you're not supposed to clean up that mess. It serves a purpose.
II. God is not the culmination of the stability and security that you grew up with as a child.
Basic human needs are wrapped around the idea that stability and security are important. We want consistency, we want comfort, we want meaningful correspondences within created spheres of stability and security. None of what I just said is God. God told Abraham to leave His home and go to a random land that He'll show to Him, God delivered His people out of Egypt and sent them (after some serious detours) to their promised land. Paul was going to persecute more followers of Jesus and then he has a conversion experience on the way to Damascus. Jesus said no to healing the Syrophoenician woman's sick daughter and afterwards He went to preach and perform miracles to the Greeks, prior to that point all of His ministry were focused on the Jewish people. Peter kept the old Jewish customs of restricted eating until God came to Him in a dream and told Him otherwise. Samuel anointed David, a shepherd, to the Israeli monarchy. If there is anything that God is, it's unstable. If God is anything, He is the breaking point of security and stability.
We want to cling to what we know and what we grew up with because it's easy to go back to in our minds. Losing our security and stability is hard and scary sometimes. You'll never find a verse that has God asking if He cares about us being scared of losing our stability and comfort. Clinging to what we know like scared animals cling to their mothers doesn't let God be God through us and in us. It makes Him to be the symbol of the comfort and stability we had growing up but with Jesus talk slapped on it like stickers. God isn't a placeholder for human comfort and systemic security. In the Bible He doesn't care for it and I don't see why the church should care for it either.
III. Your faith is petty.
Oh I'm going to have fun with this one.
People are petty so it's no surprise to me that faith becomes petty. It's a low blow to God to read the Bible, to read doctrine, and to read church tradition as though it somehow chains God. For someone as conflict crazy as me (I do love a good fight and a good shouting match) this is my trigger happy moment. You may or may not be surprised at how many people read the Bible in a literal, absolutist, historically accurate way (this is somewhat the job of Biblical inerrancy). The Bible is not the arbiter of all truth. I'm not convinced for a second that Jesus went forty days and nights without food. Jesus, being fully human (being fully human, read that again but slower), couldn't have done that (and He doesn't get a pass for it because He's Jesus). It's biologically impossible. More than likely it's an idiom the writers used to mean "really long time". Their audience wasn't going to fact check them. They could get away with it to a certain degree. If you put your faith into these moments then your faith is inherently petty. If Jesus had to starve Himself for forty days in order for Him to be Jesus then your concept of Jesus is petty and weak. If you believe in a literal seven day creation, and if God can only be God if your idea of a seven day creation is maintained and fixed, then your idea of God sucks. If there had to be two thieves between Jesus in order for Him to be the Messiah then you're limiting Jesus. The details don't matter when it comes to salvation. I'm not sold on that for a minute. Jesus saves. Your concept of Jesus saving doesn't save, Jesus saves. We don't have the ability to limit grace with our potentially petty faith.
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