A look at the relevance of Jesus for today

The story is told of a university student who, running to catch a two-hour final exam in chemistry, encountered the campus chaplain in the hallway. Breezing by without missing a beat, the student blurted out, “Will you pray for me at 4 p.m.?”

“Of course,” replied the chaplain, calling after her. “But why do you want me to wait until then?”

“My exam begins at 3 p.m.,” she shouted back, “and I’d like an hour to see if I can do it on my own.”

Does Jesus, or the God he proclaimed, have any relevance to our modern situation, or to the pending exam of the college coed described here? In a society that venerates self-reliant heroes, rugged pioneers, crusty cowboys and hard-boiled entrepreneurs, it should not surprise us that our capacity for commitment to God is seriously diminished and underdeveloped. What people want and feel they need in a context shaped predominately by self-centered individualism is a personalized, custom-built religious experience—a natural out-growth of the mix ’em, match ’em cafeteria-style consumer culture in which we live.

Charles Strohmer, a lecturer on contemporary religious trends and author of The Gospel and the New Spirituality, calls this “The New Spirituality” —a swirl of practices and beliefs inspired by elements of Eastern religions, New Age-ism, self-help and pop psychologies, the occult and “a dash of Western optimism” reinforced by “whatever current scientific theories can be assumed.” No two people put these elements together in exactly the same way, he says, since each is striving to design a spiritual “product” that suits their individual needs.

The result is that we now encounter not just one or even several but many stories about “truth”—as many stories, in fact, as there are people to develop them—and all are considered of equal veracity, weight and value.

What a trend we have in Jesus: Into this mix comes the Jesus story, elements of which appear in today’s culture to be more popular and trendy than ever. Dozens of films have featured Jesus in recent years, and Jesus also makes frequent television appearances. There is virtually no area of pop culture that remains untouched by the Jesus factor, from the music scene and the sports world to tattoo art and the fashion industry with its popular line of T-shirts.

But where and when Jesus lived, and what he said and did, are virtually absent from most of these popular depictions. If one takes the time to dig a bit deeper and explore what 21st-century North Americans actually know or think about Jesus, one will encounter quite a spectrum of responses, including some of the following:

Legend: A recent survey in Britain and some parallel research being conducted among youth in the United States reveals that a high percentage of those interviewed believe Jesus to be a fictitious figure who never actually existed.

Lost: He did actually exist as a living person, but there is, unfortunately, no way to peel off the multiple encrusted layers of what others have said and thought about him.

Ludicrous: It is possible, perhaps even likely, that Jesus was a wonderful first-century teacher, but much of his ministry and message is unintelligible in our modern scientific age.

Likeable: There are parts of Jesus’ message that are indeed appealing—his emphasis, for example, on peace, kindness, dignity, justice and freedom. It’s the “Son of God,” “forgiveness of sins,” “I am the way” and ‘final judgment” stuff that creates distance between us and people of other religious traditions.

Lunatic: The question isn’t whether Jesus was sincere. But was he misguided or at times excessively full of himself?

Maybe it’s time to take another look at Jesus: Every one of the questions raised above deserves attention. To do so, we need to take another look at Jesus, to return to the biblical text—our primary written source for encountering Jesus—to listen once again to the captivating narrative that unfolds within its pages and to remind ourselves anew of the remarkable relevance of Jesus to our 21st-century circumstances.

Such an exercise does not necessarily answer all the questions we may have. Yet, as we explore the biblical story and learn more about the passionate convictions of the first New Testament faith communities, we find ourselves intrigued and strangely drawn to this Jesus for whom they abandoned all—and for whose cause they were willing to die. In the process, we discover that this carpenter from Nazareth is as disturbingly relevant for us in our North American world today as he was for Palestinian peasants and villagers living two millennia ago.

The picture of Jesus presented to us by these early witnesses is not an exact photograph in high-definition detail. Neither is it an indistinct abstract painting. It is more like a portrait, reliable and trustworthy in its representation, with more than enough detail for us to ask serious questions and find life-giving answers about who this Jesus was and is and how, hailing from a dumpy, backwater town in northern Palestine, he has become the most famous, transformative person in all of human history.

In many ways, it comes down to something as simple as this: If Jesus is nonexistent, unworthy, inaccessible or unreliable in any way, then nothing much about him ultimately matters. If, on the other hand, Jesus is what he said, said what he meant and meant what he said, then he could well be—in our lives and in the world—the only reality that ultimately matters. Nothing is more counter-intuitive to most people in our world today, yet these issues remain central to the journey we are on.

Lesslie Newbigin, a lifelong missionary and former bishop in the Church of South India, takes this to another level when he writes: “If, in fact, it is true that Almighty God, creator and sustainer of all that exists in heaven or on earth, has—at a known time and place in human history—so humbled himself as to become part of our sinful humanity and to suffer and die a shameful death to take away our sin and to rise from the dead as the first fruit of a new creation; if this is a fact, then to affirm it is not arrogance. To remain quiet about it is treason to our fellow human beings.

Newbigin’s bold affirmation urgently invites us to ask hard questions about what, finally, we will do with Jesus—this same Jesus who reaches out his nail-pierced hand to each of us with a warm and engaging call of invitation, “Believe in me and follow.”

This article was taken from the introduction to Jesus Matters: Good News for the Twenty-First Century by James Krabill and David W Shenk (Herald Press). More information at www.mpn.net/jesusmatters.