Dragging Jesus onto the Rutted Road

 

    This meme, which has been on a social media tour lately, is by no means expressing a new idea. This notion of contrasting a supposed "conservative" caucasian Jesus against an "historical" (i.e. "liberal") Jesus was something I'd seen expressed long before there were memes - and I myself recall utilizing similar sorts of arguments, even putting up signs (pre-memes) on my dormitory door at an evangelical bible college to irk my more conservative fellow students. But this is a perfect example of what I'd mentioned previously about dragging Jesus onto the rutted road and trying to cram Him into one of our ruts. 

The act of dragging Jesus onto the road isn't something that is done with any thought at all, rather it is assumed. This is because we unconsciously perceive the world through the lenses of our 21st century American socio-political and cultural narratives - this is something we cannot easily escape. Everything we experience, see, hear, read, or even think about is filtered through these lenses. Even the ancient religion of Christianity itself which was born in a radically different socio-political and cultural narrative is filtered through our modern lenses and frequently  distorted in ways that pretty much anyone prior to 1500 A.D. would hardly recognize our thousands of modern versions of it.  Using modernity's materialist lenses leads to profound misunderstandings of Christ's personhood, nature, teachings, and actions and this meme shows them quite well. (e.g. pitting "died for your sins" against "killed by church and state" ) 

So, in this meme we have one rut laying claim to Jesus as being present in their trench by creating a strawman "conservative" Jesus and contrasting it with a supposed "historical" Jesus (i.e. "liberal" Jesus) who is - we are to presume - the REAL Jesus who sides with one rut over the other "bad" rut.  They've picked Jesus up and crammed Him, whether He wants it or not,  into our perception of reality and made Him to fit into a box that we can hold and keep safe, much like a tamed emotional support animal.  As I read the meme, I can imagine Job's whirlwind off in the distance, coming to change our hearts and minds from wishing to fit Jesus into our perception of reality and instead shattering our illusions and freeing our minds from the prison of modernity's materialism. 

One could very easily pick apart this meme in dozens of ways, for example I've never even heard of a "conservative" Christian claiming that Jesus is a caucasian. And then there is the wearisome and simplistic trope of Jesus being "friends of sinners" that is trumpeted by "liberal" Christians which lacks a fuller and deeper context (e.g. Jesus says to the woman caught in adultery: "Go and sin no more."), but I won't bother with that. The bigger problem is the mindset in which this meme makes ANY sense at all.

Jesus isn't our argument support pet. He is God incarnate. If you believe you can make sense of His life and teachings by filtering them through the lenses of the modern socio-political culture war (whether on the right or the left), I would do all that I can to dissuade you of this notion. Who Jesus Christ is and what He teaches can only by fully comprehended by escaping the Matrix of the current narrative we live in. One side claims to be woke and the other side makes fun of this, but in Christ...well, we're not just talking about waking after sleep, we're talking about becoming alive after death. Now. 

Jesus reduced to a meme in order to support a side in the socio-political culture war, is staggeringly short-sighted. He who hung the earth upon the waters, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, He who clothes Himself with light as with a garment, the Alpha and the Omega, He who wraps the heavens in clouds, the Beginning and the End, the great I AM, the Conqueror of death and hades is now turned into a cartoon-like meme for use as ammunition in social media arguments of a particular time about particular issues. Throughout history, for as long as there has been civilization of one sort or another, there have been similarly styled arguments, and the people in that time and place no doubt thought them exceptionally important. Indeed, even in our Lord's time, these socio-political culture wars existed and were often brought to our Lord in an effort to get Him to take a side (e.g. "Should we pay taxes to Ceasar?") I don't believe He ever did take a side...His mission transcended these concerns. It still does.