Don't believe in the Jesus you made, believe in the who He says He is

Don’t believe in and worship the god you want Him to be, believe and worship the God He tells us He is. We can find that through a continual pursuit of a relationship with Him. Look at David for example and the psalms, David wasn’t a perfect man but he was a man who was passionately chasing God. Psalms 42:1 says “As the deer pants for the water brooks, So pants my soul for You, O God.”

As Americans we have a few different brands of Jesus. I think some of the most prevalent are what I would call the peace and love Jesus, the Judge, and we have the Unjust.

Peace and Love

The peace and love is this version we have where there is ultimate tolerance. It doesn’t matter if you know Him or not as long as you’re a good person and really, deep down just about everyone is a good person. (everyone does what they think is the right thing. Morals are ambiguous, what is good in one place or time is wrong in another. There is no unified theory of morality among humans. ) One logic problem with this is that being a good person is really hard to pin down. For example one person may think that gender affirming care is evil and supporting such is wrong. They may believe that the right thing to do is to find mental health care and give support and encouragement in their birth gender. Others may see this as evil and refusing to accept the person for who they are and denying them critical help to embrace their gender identity.

Now then if there is one person holding each of those views and neither knows Jesus then which is the good person who goes to heaven?

Our instinct is to say that the one who holds our own belief is the good person, but I’m confident every instigator of mass genocide felt that way too. In fact, most incarcerated people rate themselves higher in morality than the average person (in prison or not).

My main problem with the peace and love Jesus idea is that it contradicts who He said He was and why He was here. Chances are you know John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. – Red letters there, that’s a quote from Jesus, and it continues on to the much lesser known verses John 3:17-18 “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

It also flies right in the face of Romans 3:10 “As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;”’.

So the point here I’m trying to make is that as nice as it sounds, we love the idea of a savior but without an effort to know who He is we miss the point and miss out on who He really is.

The Judge

Next there is this idea of Jesus as a judge. This sort of goes two ways, the first is that He’s just the Judge sitting on a throne and watching for our next mistake. When we step out of line He’s there to say “aha! I got you!”. Since its impossible to live this perfect life then why try? Why follow this God who we can never satisfy? Well in a way that may be right, the bible says that there is no one that is good right? We can’t ever live a good enough life to earn our way to heaven, but that’s why Jesus came and died for us. To be the payment for our sins. We are judged guilty, but ruled innocent through Jesus.

On the other hand, heres an idea that we have to live this perfect life and since that’s impossible we have to let our good deeds outweigh our bad. That God is a judge who measures your rights against your wrongs. So maybe I told a lie about why I was late for work, but I also held the door open for someone today so I’m good now right? The judge will look at my “community service hours” and see that I’ve done enough to make up for my mistakes and then I’m golden. Well if that’s the case what was the point of Jesus death and resurrection?

The Unjust

Finally one of the major beliefs I’ve seen is in this unjust God. This one seems like it comes primarily from people who consider themselves atheist, but are angry at the deity in which they don’t believe.

The idea is that if the Peace and Love Jesus is so good then why does He allow evil to exist? Or more precisely they ask “if God is love then why doesn’t He do something about all the evil in the world”.

It’s a tough question and a tough concept, but its asked from a standpoint of ignorance. I don’t say that as a means of insult but rather to say that there is a lack of understanding of who God is when they are asking the question.

God told us who He is when He gave us the bible. He is loving, He is also righteous, He is Jealous, He mourns, He is angry, He is Compassionate, and so much more. More importantly He doesn’t just love the nice people. I say nice and not “good” because there is no one who fits His criteria of good.

Think of it this way. You have two children, you love them both dearly. One listens to you and follows your rules and loves spending time with you while the other ignores everything you say and pretends you don’t exist. He’s terribly mean to his sibling and makes their life miserable. You have a choice to make, you can kill the problem child and live happily with the “good” one or you can try to reach the “bad” kid while you can. Lets say that you know for absolute certain that regardless of what happens to the good kid they will grow up to be wildly successful and happy, but those first few years may be agony. Do you take away the trouble childs chance of reconciling and having a life in order to spare the other their pain?

It’s a hard question. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s had to go through or is going through unimaginable atrocities and yeah, you’d probably say the person or people responsible deserve what they get. I could never blame them for feeling that way and I want that justice for them. But my point is that a God that loves everyone might see things a little differently than here’s a bad guy and here’s the good one. Its “I love both of them and I want the one committing atrocities to repent”. We see that in scripture.

Think about Saul later named Paul. He was tracking down these people who had done nothing but tell others what they knew about Jesus and having them stoned to death while he puffed out his chest and patted himself on the back for being such a good man.

After he became acquainted with Christ he became the one who was beaten, stoned, imprisoned and more. He did it gladly because he knew that eternity was much more important than a few decades here and he wanted these “evil” people to be transformed by a relationship with Jesus.

I’m not there yet. I don’t yet have that kind of capacity for grace and love, but I do understand the reasoning.

There is so much more on this topic but it deserves its own post.

But what this all boils down to is that you can’t take one characteristic of God and say that it is what defines Him. Jesus was the Word made flesh and in His time on earth we see that He is a whole person. He healed, He rebuked, He flipped tables, He wept, He ate and slept just like us. To say God is love and leave it at that is to say “Steve is Anger” after Steve got mad and knocked over the vending machine in the break room.

Who Is God?

Yes in truth God is love, but He is also much more. As complex as humans and our emotions are how can we think that God is so simple that we can define Him in a single concept, if He is infinitely greater than should He not also be infinitely more complex?

So who is the God we should believe in? Believe in who He says He is and find that by digging into His word and spending time with Him, seeking Him, and listening to Him.

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