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Tuesday, 26 December 2006 14:22 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
"The Christ of Theology is not alive for us today. He is wrapped in the grave cloths of dogma."
ÇƒÏ Albert Schweitzer
ï
MARS HILL ÇƒÓ I have seen a video that presents only half the gospel. You can, too. "The Jesus Video" has come to your mailbox, or will. Produced by an outfit hoping to send it out ÇƒÓ free of charge ÇƒÓ to every home in the nation, it comes with an extensive list of local churches that sponsor this video.
These churches may not like what follows, but I hope they listen.
The
video as a finished product is quite believable, authentic in terms of
props, scenery and in biblical quotation. (OK, the guards had British
accents.) It is carefully produced to provide one overriding point:
Individual human sin is the Big Thing that needs correcting. Correct
oneës personal sin, through Christ and one is then made safe for God.
And thatës all Jesus came for.
Thatës fine, as far as it goes. But itës only half the gospel. The
Jesus Video producers have done a tremendous disservice to the Gospel,
and they should apologize and re-issue the video either with the full
gospel, or with a disclaimer that they have presented only half of
Jesusë message.
The sad irony is the video uses only Lukeës Gospel. The video is
completely blind, however, to the unique thrust of Luke among the four
gospels. This exclusive point is the Gospel is not personal, but
personal + social-political. Sin is not just a personal getting right
with God, because the personal is inextricably (though usually
invisibly) linked up with the social.
Thus, our individual sins are embedded in a corrupt social milieu,
local and global, and they feed worldwide sinful attitudes, which
re-feed us. This video omits Lukeës critical demands that
transformation needs to occur in the social and the personal. They are
not sundered worlds, but one. The personal is political.
The video does not reference Lukeës many references to poor people, nor
why they are poor; the story of the rich man and Lazarus, for example,
is omitted. Zaccheus the tax collectorës restitution is limited to just
those outside his front door. It omits the wider implications of
stealing from the poor that tax policies do.
It does not present many sick people, for if it did, one would soon
have to begin asking uncomfortable questions as to why there are sick
people in the first place and why societyës health care and economic
distribution systems do not address them.
Lukeës story of Jesus has him dying for social sins more than
individual sins; the video would have us believe that our sins ÇƒÓ not
the societal failures ÇƒÓ actually killed him.
Luke is aimed not so much at the spiritually anxious (Am I a saved
sinner?) but against the "haves." Lukeës Jesus condemns rich, well-fed
and respected members of society. His sympathies are with the poor, not
the poor-in-spirit. He advocates an economics of redistribution. Why
does the video leave out Maryës Song, some of which is worth repeating:
"Iëm bursting with God-news; He bared his arm and showed his strength,
scattered the bluffing braggarts. He knocked tyrants off their high
horses, pulled victims out of the mud. The starving poor sat down to a
banquet; the callous rich were left out in the cold."
Thus, the Jesus Video could have presented a full gospel, but it chose
to do it half-assed, half-way. This is one inoffensive video grinding
the single axe of personal salvation. Please, can we not get past this
and to the larger conversation about how to regard the self as one
webbed into a world, a society, and an environment also in need of
help? This is Biblical travesty, to take the most socially aware Gospel
and turn it into a personal morality tale.
Throw this video away! The book is better.
ï
Dr. Marc S. Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion
departments at Mars Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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