© 2008 Jeremy A. Bouma

Preface

On one of my bedroom walls hangs two precious items: a Christmas ornament cross I co-opted to serve as a spiritual focal point for prayer and meditation and a certified authentic Eastern Orthodox Ikon I snuck-off with during a mission trip to Romania. Well, I didn’t exactly steal the thing. I really did pay the Hungarian Ikonography for the finely painted 3×5 inch block of wood. I did hide it, though, from the rest of my mission trip mates because of the uncomfortable questions it would attract. As a thoroughly Western Christian, and (mostly) evangelical one at that, Ikons are a no-no. So I hid it.

I hid “Christ the Giver of Life.”

Think about that: Jesus Christ is the giver of everything that is real about Life. And I hid him! What an appropriate metaphor for this book: hiding a physical representation of the beautiful reality of the good, hopeful news about Life available in the Giver Jesus. Over the years I’ve come to believe that the Church Herself, in many ways, hides “Christ the Giver of Life” from the rest of the world. The Church has taken the life-giving power that is inherent in the hopeful message of Jesus and turned it into something perceived as offensive and actually down right repulsive at times.

Notice I said Christians have turned the hopeful message of Jesus into something offensive. The message of Jesus itself isn’t offensive, we and the message we carry often are. Neither is Jesus inherently offensive. Rather, His followers are the ones who offend, contributing to a culture that likes Jesus, but not the Church.

Over the years it seems like Christians have forgotten who Jesus is. On the one hand He’s a White middle-class Republican who’s really only concerned with blessing you with a Jesus-stamped American Dream. On another hand, He isn’t really all that concerned with your life (or the entire world for that matter) now, because the real duty of Jesus is to get you and a few others beamed off of earth and into heaven. On yet another hand, Jesus is nothing more than a revolutionary, moral example of love who did nothing for us on the cross, and was not physically resurrected for that matter.

So the Jesus we show is either a middle-class American or a 70’s hippie; the story we tell is either escapism or do-gooder moralism. Where is the Jesus of the Bible? The one who said it’s necessary to love your neighbor as yourself and love God; the one who said we must be spiritually reborn and face judgment for what we do in this life. And what about God’s Story of Rescue? The one that says heaven is a place on earth; the one that says personal sin and death and evil were real objective things that needed to be dealt with, and were defeated through the cross and resurrection?

Here’s the thing: we the Church are responsible for the Jesus we show and the Jesus people see; we the Church are responsible for the Story we tell and the Story people hear.

Who, then, is the Jesus we’re showing? Who is the Jesus the world sees? What is the Story we’re telling? What is the Story they hear? What is the portrait of Jesus we are painting and what version of His Story are we penning?

Granted, the Church cannot entirely control how people will react to Jesus and His good news. Even Jesus couldn’t do that. I do understand that people will still react, even in offense, to the way Christians show Jesus and tell His Story no matter how well-meaning and good they show and tell. Despite these realities, however, I do think there is space to offer a better showing and telling.

This book is my attempt to show Jesus as He really was, to tell the complete, hopeful Story of Rescue the whole Holy Scriptures sketches. This is the reason for the provocative title: to drive a conversation within the Church about our showing and telling and offer an alternative to both. In Part One, I aim to show Jesus as the One who fully expressed God while also fully participating in all of life by declaring solidarity with humanity and showing them a better, more real way of being human. I also hope to show a Jesus who really, really loves people and really, really loves you, rather than a Jesus who is ticked at the world. Jesus loved the world so much that He willingly went to a wretched cross to rescue the world by paying the penalty for our evil, rebellion, and death. That is good news, indeed! This good, divine-human Jesus is the center of an amazing Story of Rescue that undergirds our collective histories, one that needs a better telling. Part Two hopes to tell a better Story than the one typically told, a Story that is hopeful, life-giving, and thoroughly (un)offensive. This Story carries with it a message that people, when they come across it, are enlivened and beckoned, rather than turned-off or defeated.

Throughout the book you’ll meet a cast of characters who add flesh to the skeleton of my theological framework: you’ll meet Taylor who is a bisexual atheist and Mykha’el, a gay Christian; Ben, Cameron and Rachel, three recent high school graduates will share their journey through Reformed Christianity; and Andy, a college senior, as well. Their contributions affected me so much that I needed to share their personal stories and spiritual journeys. I trust they will affect you even beyond what my own stories, musings, and attempts at theology could accomplish on their own. These perspectives from my friends, coupled with my own thoughts, will hopefully help solidify a hardy, robust argument and vision for an (un)offensive gospel of Jesus.

I admit, though, that my thoughts aren’t all that new. Abraham Kuyper gave us a fourfold understanding of the gospel: creation, fall, redemption, consummation. I’ve just repackaged them as creation, rebellion, rescue, and re-creation. Plenty has been written in the last few years on following Jesus and living His Way well. I try to package and present some of that in relationship to the Church’s efforts at showing and being Jesus to the world around us. But while I admit my thoughts have been written elsewhere by better men and women, how I offer those ideas and the conversation I am trying to spark in these pages is a needed discussion. The only reason I have to writing this book is not because of what I have done or accomplished, but what God did through Jesus Christ; this Story is God’s. Openhanded I humbly come, then, to offer my thoughts and musings on the fascinating person of Jesus and His hopeful, (un)offensive gospel, good news that is from the one and only God, who was and is and is to come.

Lest you think that my use of (un)offensive (both as a literal and rhetorical device) means undemanding, think again. While I do not believe the heart of Jesus and substance of His Story is offensive, I do not mean His demands will not irritate our modern sensibilities. A line from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe comes to mind: “Safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he is good.” Like Aslan, Jesus is very, very good, but He is also unsafe; He is thoroughly unpredictable, unwieldy, and entirely demanding of every ounce of our being. Those who come to the resurrected unsafe Jesus to find rest, rescue, and re-creation do not walk away from that encounter unchanged nor are they able to slink away into their previous way of living.

The gospel of Jesus, then, is both (un)offensive and offensive. Jesus’ good news of rescue and re-creation is not inherently offensive, yet people can still react in offense at its demands.

As one apostle author put it, though: “I am not ashamed of the good, hopeful message of Jesus, because that message is the very power of God to rescue and re-create all of humanity, for everyone who believes in Jesus and His Story.” A good, hopeful message cannot be by nature offensive. Likewise, a good, loving person cannot offer both an offensive message and good news. While the hearers of that (un)offensive message may react in offense out of pride and self-sufficiency, neither the Story nor its main Character is inherently offensive. This is exactly what my title seeks to convey: neither the loving, gentle, caring Jesus of the Holy Scriptures nor the gospel message He bears is inherently offensive as some Christians seem to insist. Rather, both are hopeful, life-giving, joyous, comforting, rescuing, and restoring to the core. I hope this book casts a vision of a showing and telling of good Jesus and His hopeful Story that is as wonderful, engaging, (un)offensive and healing as the Man and Story themselves, while urging the Church to take partial responsibility for the cultures reaction to their current show and tell efforts.

The more I follow the radical Jesus of the Holy Scriptures, the deeper I dive into His Way, and the more I listen to the spiritual journeys of others, the more I realize both Jesus and His gospel are good, sweet news for all the world. Embedded within the person and reality of Jesus Christ, within the words and way of this God-with-us-God is the very stuff of life, the fountainhead from which all humans can suckle unending streams of the marrow of life.

My only question is this: what’s offensive about that?

Jeremy A. Bouma
Grand Rapids, Michigan (October 2008)

For a larger draft portion, please enjoy this Exerpt Draft Copy.