Jesus Is Just Alright With Me
Photo by Gift Habeshaw on Unsplash
The Church is under attack. While scores of sustained and unprecedented assaults on our faith are nothing new, the postmodern age is certainly finding new ways to suppress our influence. From the religious Right we hear, "They are going to shut you down,” and from the Left, "You are losing your Christ-like witness." Though debates loom over human sexuality, the role of the church in race relations, or how to respond to COVID-19, the most significant attack on Christians and the church is something that the early church wrestled with over than 1700 years ago: the personhood and divinity of Jesus Christ. To reduce this phenomenon to one word, the problem is Gnosticism. Gnosticism was believed to be such theological malpractice that Pope Pious IX called it the “heresy of heresies” in his 1907 Encyclical Pascendi, and this attack is coming from within the church itself, a variety of theological seminaries, and the culture. It is no surprise that Ligonier’s recent findings indicate that more than half of all Americans say that Jesus was a good teacher, but do not believe that he is God. Now, here's the kicker: close to 35% of evangelicals think the same: that Jesus was a great guy to model, but was not or is not God (see https://thestateoftheology.com ).
In other words, Jesus is just alright. As the old song goes:
Jesus is just alright with me, Jesus is just alright I don't care what they may say, I don't care what they may doI don't care what they may say, Jesus is just alright, oh yeah
This song “Jesus is Just Alright” has transcended both time and space from its origins, with the Art Reynolds Singers in 1966, the Byrds, the Doobie Brothers, DC Talk in the early 1990s, all the way to Robert Randolph and the Family Band featuring Eric Clapton in 2006, and finally, in 2013 with the album “No More Hell To Pay” by Stryper. The song is more than just a Gospel chart-topper; it has become an implicit theological framework of the North American Church's culture and teachings for far too long.
The deviation from a core historic Christian doctrine by a third of evangelicals is attributable to many factors, but one to highlight is the rise of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). The phrase was first introduced 15 years ago in a book entitled Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford, 2005), by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. MTD can be summarized in five core tenets:
A God exists who created the world, orders it, and watches over human life on earth.
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
Good people go to heaven when they die.
These points have given us insight into what teens perceive about both Christianity and religion in general. MTD has also made its way through the modern fabric of Christianity in North America. As these teens are now adults with their own children, it is no surprise that a therapeutic view of the Christian faith has replaced the hard work of discipleship and the work of the Holy Spirit, including sanctification. This results in the vague message: You’re okay, I'm okay, just be a good person. So, at the end of the day, the role of Jesus gets reinterpreted through a new lens. As Leroy Huizenga frames it, “Far from seeing him as our Master, the postmodern age makes Jesus our mascot, the one who affirms our favored causes and affirms us in our deepest selves, where we find ourselves defined by our severest desires.” In other words, Jesus is reduced to a mere ethos of modern culture, of what fits our latest agenda, excuse or modern virtue. What I’m really curious about, however, is the question, “What do the pastors believe?”
What would be revealed to us if we polled clergy from different Christian faith traditions, denominations, and backgrounds using the same set of questions? I suspect the poll would provide us with another shock. If we wanted to go even deeper, we would look past the clergy to those who train them and see where their common beliefs lie about Jesus. Could it be that we are seeing a problem not just in the pews, but in the pulpit as well as theological education?
So, what is the solution to this widespread Disneyfication of the scripture? I am sure there are many proposals depending on who you ask. In some ways, this dilution of the faith is to be expected in the postmodern age as some church leaders attempt to make faith appealing to younger generations of people who are driven by their own trends and sensibilities. But we must not lose sight of the true message, so my recommendation for the church and pastoral leaders is simply to get back to the basics – it is from the fundamentals that we can build a stronger teaching. The Church is missing the ministry of teaching while focusing on trendy forms of outreach, entertaining worship, and Ted-Talk preaching without a mention of scripture--or worse, twisting scripture.
To be quite frank, quarantine has taught me the importance of teaching and discipleship. Now I know what you’re thinking: How can this be, since I work at a seminary, I have started churches and I’m a pastor? How has quarantine been the better instructor? I have always relied heavily on my apostolic and evangelistic gifts while focusing less on other skills that don’t come as naturally. This is the reason churches and pastors need to build teams in areas in which they are deficient. So, in the third year of a new church plant we are unapologetically focusing on discipleship and teaching. I wish it had not taken me as long to make this realization, but the disturbing statistics about views on Jesus, the decline in Scriptural literacy, along with Christians duking it out over a variety of issues, has convinced me that I am on the right track. At Mosaic Church, we recently started a variety of virtual small groups. Some are not so small. In a matter of just a few weeks, we have developed a men’s group with nearly forty participants who share their stories and struggles and pray for one another. Life-on-life transference is happening in learning to walk like Jesus.
As I reflect on all that is taking place in the church, the United States, and our world, I can’t help but think of the famous seventeenth-century evangelist from England, George Whitefield. Whitefield was a fiery and charismatic preacher who could captivate and command people’s attention, even more so than his contemporary, John Wesley. Though Whitefield was considered a more dynamic preacher than Wesley, there’s an interesting story about Whitefield’s remorse toward the end of his ministry. Joseph Beaumont Wakeley, in an essay called “John Wesley and Whitefield's Will,” recounts a time when Whitefield met an old friend, Mr. John Pool, and had the following conversation:
Whitefield one day met Pool, and accosted him thus:
“Well, John, art thou still a Wesleyan?”
Pool replied, “Yes, sir, and I thank God that I have the privilege of being in connection with him, and one of his preachers.”
“John,” said Whitefield, “thou art in the right place. My brother Wesley acted wisely—the souls that were awakened under his ministry he joined in class, and thus preserved the fruits of his labor. This I neglected, and my people are a rope of sand.”
The ministry of teaching and upholding doctrine has traditionally been upheld by bishops. Yet the role of bishop, depending on the tradition, has commonly become excessively bureaucratic and administrative, focusing on man-made rules and regulations, rather than on teaching and correcting the doctrine of the Church. Could it be that we are entering an era in which God wants to help the church recover its grounded theological teachings and doctrines about Jesus and other foundational points to carry into a post-Christendom world? There is ample opportunity for Christians, church leaders, pastors, and seminaries to rise up and lead the way for what biblical Christianity could look like in the twenty-first century. At the end of the day, everyone has to wrestle and make his or her own decision about Jesus. This is the same question that Pilate posed to the crowd before Christ was crucified in Matthew 27:22a, "What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called the Messiah?"
What are we going to do about Jesus? Are we going to follow Jesus with our everything? Or is Jesus just alright with us?
Dr. Rosario Picardo is Dean of the Chapel at United Theological Seminary, directs the seminary's leadership center, and is an active affiliate faculty member. In addition to Rosario's roles at United, he is the co-founding pastor of Mosaic Church in Dayton, Ohio, and coaches and speaks to church planters and leaders from around the country.