Chapter 1
Jesus Christ, Crucified
"We preach Jesus Christ, and Him crucified"
A familiar boast, taken from Paul's words in First
Corinthians 2:2 and
I've been a Christian for over 30 years, and I have heard many an altar call. None of them urged us to ask Jesus to come into our hearts and lay his cross on our backs, or anything like that - but that is plainly what Jesus preached. The unadorned words of Jesus do make us twitch, don't they? Do we always proclaim them just the way he did?
What we preach is not really Jesus Christ crucified - especially not Christ crucified in us. We do preach a doctrine of his crucifixion - that he died for our sins so that we might not have to. To us, preaching Christ crucified is preaching that the cross was for Jesus, so that the cross is for us only in the past, not to be suffered in our experience this day. That's what we love best about the old rugged cross!
This is neither what Jesus preached, nor the teaching of the apostles.
Jesus said, "Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not
worthy to be my disciple" (Matt.
We died with Christ so that we might live - the Christian life! To live the Christian life is to experience the death of Jesus every day in order to share in his resurrection. That is what the apostles taught.
American Christianity proclaims Christ crucified as a doctrine, which together with the resurrection, reconciles us to God just because we believe it, so that his Spirit can make us alive in Christ and cause us to escape from death altogether.
The apostles preached that Christ crucified is a Person who died, who was raised, and who lives. If we receive Him, we do not receive a doctrine. We receive that Person, and that Person - who is the same yesterday, today, and forever - will live in us the same crucified life he lived in the days of his flesh.
Jesus did not die to exempt us from his death. He died to rescue us from our death, the due consequence for repudiating God's life, to give us in its place his death, through which he obtained resurrection, and through which we obtain resurrection as the Spirit of God causes us to follow in his steps. Indeed, when God calls a man, he calls him to die, so that he may live, just as Jesus did. There was no other way for Him, and therefore surely not for us.
Who is this Jesus Christ, whom God portrays crucified in every culture (Gal.
3:1), so that men from every culture may believe in Him? In Jesus, God
did not stop at becoming man. He went still lower, taking the form of a
slave (Phil. 2:7). In dying by crucifixion, a death considered so obscene
that the cross was not to be mentioned in polite Roman society, Jesus became
the least of men (Matt. 25:31-46), a worm (Ps. 22:6), having no rights that any
Roman was bound to respect. American Christians love Christ the Savior,
and some glory in obeying Christ the Lord, but to us in the
Christ the Nigger
Jesus of Nazareth was born in a shed, like an American slave, and his crib
was an animal's feeding trough. The Dred Scott
decision of 1857 decided, among other things, that black men had no standing to
sue in Federal courts. Chief Justice Roger Taney’s
opinion correctly stated that since before the time of the Declaration of
Independence black people had always been considered “so far inferior,
that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
In the same way, Jesus, like other babies in
Jesus was marked for death for being formidable and for walking with dignity, for speaking truth to power, in a fashion that threatened the position of his enemies. Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, and Malcolm X also drank from this cup.
Jesus was sentenced to death in a mock trial, and put to death the next day by a judge who knew he was innocent, but whose chief concern was to appease a lynch mob. It was not enough to kill Jesus. Great pains were taken to degrade and humiliate Him in every way possible.
Among many other indignities, they flogged him half to death, a familiar
experience to the American slave, and thereafter to any "bad nigger"
in the southern
It was commonplace into the 1920s to seize a black man and schedule his lynching a couple of days ahead, advertising in the local paper, so people could come to town for the show. A proposed federal anti-lynching law in 1922, although it went nowhere, enforced a little more discretion thereafter, but lynchings took place routinely into the 1950s.
The parallel to the treatment of Jesus is obvious. The public spectacle, with elaborate humiliation and torture, in the lynching ritual made it perfectly clear that it was a rather conscious re-enactment of the crucifixion.
I used to think that lynching and the other cruelties of American racism
were merely the devilish acts of people who obey the devil and therefore
perform his desires. But when it came to my attention that Confederate
troops actually crucified black Union war prisoners on tent frames at
In its essence, American racism is the American Christian's hatred of Christ crucified, sacramentally expressed against the black man. In his mistreatment of the black man the American white Christian was remembering the death of Jesus Christ and repudiating that identity for himself.
Christ the Nigger is a shocking term, but am I using it just to shock? The cross is a shocking act, but was shock value really God’s purpose?
For the American Christian, Jesus Christ whom God has sent is Jesus Christ the Nigger, whom we must receive and identify with, if we are ever as American Christians to know Him, rather than the pseudo-Jesus of our own imagination.
Wherever the real Jesus Christ shows up and is welcome, people get healed
unmistakably, unquestionably. When the apostles healed the lame man at
the Beautiful Gate, their enemies said, "What are we to do with these
men? For the fact that a noteworthy miracle has taken place through them
is apparent to all who live in
They don't talk like that about us, any of us. Because we do not want Jesus as he is, we do not know Jesus as he is, and our enemies do not see among us Jesus as he is. Jesus is in truth an unwelcome stranger among us, although he walks and talks in our churches.
Of course we all really want Jesus to come to us. For that we pray all the time. But do we want him as he is? If we say yes, we're lying to ourselves, because the Bible clearly says, "He has no form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should desire Him" (Isa. 53:3, see also Matt. 25:31-46).
As in any relationship, not wanting Him as he is means we can't really have him at all. As American Christians, to really know him in any way, we must receive him at the point we have rejected him. We must embrace him as the Nigger, with the universe of history, of feelings and connotations, that that word calls forth.
The American Christian can say "cross" with a straight face and dry eyes, talking about the "plan of salvation" like a wiring diagram. It's a doctrine, a theological concept.
But if we can even bring ourselves to say "nigger," our guts turn inside out. We can say it in hatred or in guilt, hiding from its history or pondering it, but it's never a dry concept. We're there with our fathers, face up with their evil and with their disgrace, and with our own.
For God, "cross" is not a theological concept. It's all the
hatred, sweat, blood, terror, and humiliating death that "nigger"
could ever bring to mind - and more. If ever we come to terms with Jesus
the Nigger, we will have begun to get reconciled to Jesus the Crucified.
Why do we hate and fear the cross?
Is this really a stupid question? On the road to Emmaus, when his
disciples asked if he was unaware of the things that had happened in town that
weekend, Jesus asked, "What things?" To ask a really stupid
question can be enlightening. To this one I offer the following
responses:
We do not realize that God always wants to spare us needless pain
Jesus knew that death on a cross was his destiny. His Father had prepared this for him, and he clearly forewarned his disciples before his death. Nevertheless, when the time came, he prayed earnestly that if possible he might avoid this.
Did he pray this way because at the last moment he wasn't so sure he wanted to go through with it? Clearly not, because there was nothing impulsive about his prayer. He planned to go to the garden to pray, and Judas even knew to find him there. He invited the three disciples with Him to pray, and continued to pray along this line for some time. What did Jesus know about his Father to make him confidently approach him with this request to escape?
Jesus knew that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son and spared him at the last moment when Abraham obeyed. Jesus knew that God told Hezekiah that he would die but spared his life when he prayed. To some, arithmetic has revealed that Manasseh, his wicked son, was born after that time, leading them to conclude that Hezekiah should not have prayed like this. To us the Scriptures have plainly revealed Hezekiah’s real misstep in these words (2 Chron. 32:24-26):
In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill; and he prayed to the Lord,
and the Lord spoke to him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah gave no
return for the benefit to him, because his heart was high; therefore wrath came
on him and on
If, in defiance of this clear statement, we can still find fault with Hezekiah's prayer, we clearly show that we consider God a hard man, and think that true spirituality involves being tough on ourselves and even on others.
When we consider the sufferings of Jesus, we fear that these experiences have hardened him to demand the same of us. This can happen. Felix Dzerzhinsky was tortured by the Czar's secret police, the Okhrana, and when he became chief of the Soviet secret police, the Cheka, his cruelty far exceeded that of his torturers. Abused children often themselves grow up to be abusers.
In contrast, Hebrews 2:17-18 explains in these terms what suffering did to Jesus:
Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the people. For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.
It is the will of Jesus, as in his own case it was the will of his Father,
to help us, making things as easy as possible for us, and not to needlessly put
us to difficult tests. Why else did he tell us to pray, “Lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?” If we really
understood this, would we try so hard to protect ourselves from God’s
plans for us?
We do not realize that our choice is not whether to suffer, but what for
God hates to make us suffer needlessly, so if He ordains suffering, there is no other way. I can refuse to suffer according to God, but if I do, I will suffer in some other way just the same, and pointlessly. Carl Jung is said to have observed that every instance of mental illness he had encountered was rooted in the patient’s refusal to accept necessary suffering.
The apostle Peter put it this way (1 Pet. 4:1-3):
Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For the time already past is sufficient to have carried out the desires of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality, lusts, drunkenness, carousals, drinking parties, and lawless idolatries.
In this passage, the purpose of suffering is “for the will of God.” Who can arm himself with this purpose until he knows that the will of God is worth suffering for? People are willing to suffer all the time for things they think worth having. Is the will of God worth having? Once we realize that it is, we will realize that failing to have God’s will in our lives will certainly cause us to suffer deprivation of God’s life, and for no good purpose.
Do we refuse God’s call to suffer, suffering the loss of the Life we have refused and living in futility until the grave? Or do we suffer according to God, receiving the will of God in our lives, “tasting and seeing that the Lord is good?” We don’t choose whether or not to suffer. We just determine whether or not it does us any good.
We do not realize that in the cross God travels all the way to us
The Shi'ite Muslim theologian Darabnameh, evidently because he understood that God looks at the world through the eyes of the afflicted, was granted this understanding of what it takes to make a king, in particular the King of Kings:
There are a number of things which kings should learn. One is digging with a shovel and earning his bread, so that he will not lightly take the bread from the hands of others; another is for him to suffer the pains of torture so that he will not without good reason order anybody tortured; another is that he should experience hunger so that he will give to the hungry; and another is that he should know the toil of traveling on foot so that he will no longer make people go on foot to where he goes. [2]
This astounds me. These four particular types of suffering characterize Jesus in the gospels, so how did Darabnameh come up with exactly these four? Muslims hold Jesus and his teachings in high esteem, but do Muslim theologians commonly meditate deeply on the life of Jesus and on the details of his life in the gospels?
Darabnameh evidently learned these from the book of creation, as people do that realize that God is known in the wretched of the earth, so the vital importance of these four kinds of experience are the testimony not merely of this man, but of the Creator who testifies of them in his creation.
The first three of these were immediately obvious when I read them - I was familiar with the labor for little gain in the carpenter’s shop, the tortures of the crucifixion, and the hunger in the wilderness. But the fourth, the toil of traveling on foot, revealed my ignorance. I had never before considered how weary travel on foot had shaped the character of Jesus - how essential it is to the crucified life.
Weariness from long travel caused Jesus to sit beside Jacob’s well, so
that he might meet the Samaritan woman (John 6:6). That weariness
undoubtedly sharpened his compassion, prompting him to offer the good news that
she didn’t have to plod to
The toil of traveling to
In these few words, Paul described the long journey of Jesus to all of us, and his call to join him (Phil. 2:5-8):
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death of a cross.
In his own life, Paul worked it out like this (1 Cor.
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, that I may win the more. And to the Jew I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law, though not being myself under the Law, that I might win those under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means win some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it.
We too often read this as evangelistic technique; it is nothing so superficial. This is how to live, and the motivation is ultimately not to win as many people as possible but to partake in the gospel.
Paul is here describing the process of laying down his life that he may keep it. For Paul this consisted, in the words of Darabnameh, of “not making people travel on foot to where he goes.” Instead, like Jesus, Paul travels to where they are, by actually becoming what they are. Did Paul say for nothing, “I die daily?”
Paul summed up the effect of the cross as follows (Eph.
Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from
the
Many of us find this to be deep theology, so very difficult to understand. That’s because it is not theology. Read it again. It’s a story, an event, something that happened. Just as we remember the death of Jesus by an act of eating and drinking, we remember this act of reconciliation by taking our places in it, by going out to others as Jesus went out to us, as he still goes out to us. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Why did Jesus go out to us this way, why does he do so today? Is it simply because he is nice, because he wants to do good? If that’s all there is to it, I’m in trouble, because I’m really not that nice.
Jesus makes it simple. He comes out after us the way a shepherd goes out after a lost sheep, the way a poor woman searches for a lost coin, the way you search for your wedding ring which you accidentally dropped in the trash.
What if we realize that in those estranged from us we have really lost
something that we won’t find elsewhere? The rich man answers
roughly, but the poor man uses entreaties (Prov.
The crucified life makes me consider how far King Jesus came to where I am, because being helpless (Rom. 5:6), I was not able to go on foot to where he goes. I never am, even to this day. As this reality sinks in, I too begin wanting to shorten the journeys of other people.
None of this, it seems to me, is so difficult to understand. Should anything here escape the notice of Bible believing Christians to the degree that it has? Knowing that in our individual lives persistent blindness and deception is generally rooted in the past, let’s consider briefly how we, as a people, got where we are.
Hating the cross: roots in history
The peculiar obsession of American Christianity
As we see in Noah, Abraham, Moses, Abigail, Rahab the harlot, or any of the prophets, God has made every person choose at some point whether to enjoy the world’s favor or to obey Him. Jesus, too, had to make that choice. In view of this long history, Paul wrote, “Anyone who wants to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” There’s no avoiding this truth.
Nonetheless, the first Christians to come here hoped to repeal this reality
and to be able to live godly in Christ Jesus without suffering
persecution. The history of early
Our ancient terror of being powerless and persecuted has manifested itself
in two opposing tendencies. The first is a relentless effort to hold the
reins of worldly power, or at least to keep them from the hands of those who
hate us. Tremendous effort is therefore expended to show that Christians
have the right to be the American ruling class because the
The Puritans sought to ensure security from persecution by coming here and
dispossessing the Indians, astonishing the Indians, who had never seen such
warfare, by their cruelty and barbarity - in so doing utterly denying the
gospel they claimed to believe. Their descendants now unconditionally
support Israel, whose people fled from Nazi persecution to Palestine, where
they in turn have sought to assure their security by dispossessing the
Palestinians, treating them with the cruelty they received themselves in
Europe, and indeed just as Pharaoh did to their fathers, and even with the same
demographic arguments (Exodus 1:9, 12) - and in so doing completely repudiating
Judaism. We are now treated to the spectacle of Jews celebrating the
Passover while in the act of behaving precisely like the Pharaoh who oppressed
their fathers and mothers! Thus, in supporting them in such blasphemous
conduct, American Christians fill up the measure of their fathers, who have
behaved just this way ever since they came to
Our other refuge is obsequious adulation of the American nation state.
American Christians ostentatiously practice its civil religion in order to deny
to it, by our showy loyalty, any pretext to persecute us. Our Christian
schools are run by opponents of abortion who affirm that the
It’s easy to see how these opposing drives reinforce each other. As American institutions grow more hostile to us and to our values, we find it harder to justify sucking up, so we need to pressure them to be better so that we can avoid this moral crunch. This need to incline them toward us tempts us all the more to suck up in the hope of access to the halls of power, and when we fail we are bitterly disappointed.
This whole process is suffused with lying at every level, so the God of Truth will never endorse it. In his obvious absence we fling Scriptures at God and at our adversaries, and pray frantically in order to make this work, growing increasingly desperate under the brass heavens.
The fear of powerlessness at the foundation of our tradition leaves us
always ready to loathe the powerless, for the powerless remind us of our fears,
and we do not like people who remind us of our fears. If you doubt me,
listen to any political talk show on Christian radio. Somehow the guys on
the bottom - Mexican immigrants, or South African blacks when the apartheid
regime was in power, Jews before
This attitude strikes directly at the heart of our faith, the faith of Moses who chose ill-treatment and exile with the living God and with his people rather than a place of security and privilege, and of Jesus who chose likewise. As I’ve shown already, Jesus of Nazareth was born a Nigger, lived a Nigger’s life, and died a Nigger’s death. Now Jesus says, “Follow me!” The American Christian, committed with all his soul to avoiding That Place, is being called to go precisely there. The American Christian has a problem. No wonder, alienated from truth as we are, that we behave strangely.
Our strange behavior elicits some pretty defensive responses from outsiders, and so Christians see an equally obsessive effort by the ACLU and people like them to drive us altogether out of public life. Not being straight with each other or listening to each other’s hearts, Christians and our opponents continue a useless dance of death.
It’s really quite simple. The cross renders us powerless. The last thing the American Christian wants is to be rendered powerless, and that’s why the American Christian hates the cross.
Distortions in the common Christian tradition
Christians of all varieties carry forward a sinful legacy from the past that greatly distorts our beliefs and hinders our efforts to follow Jesus in obedience to his Father. Indeed, our behavior testifies that we all really know this. Especially for Protestants, divisions arise from trying to separate from sinful elements in our tradition by separating from others whom we identify with these wrongs. This deception is the real root of much evangelical hostility to Roman Catholicism, and the same principle similarly incites Protestants against one another.
The Church learned this habit early. As Kenneth Scott Latourette documented in his very sympathetic History of Christianity, doctrinal divisions in the early church were really expressions of selfish ambition and lack of love, [3] for which the only remedy was repentance. Instead of applying that remedy, the church kept trying to resolve these disputes by devising creeds to agree upon and ejecting anyone who wouldn’t buy them. Since Jesus made it clear that Christian unity was only possible in obedience to him in the love of God, expecting to achieve this unity in any doctrinal statement was idolatry. Idolatrous religion always results in showy piety void of ethical content, as the prophets documented in too many places to enumerate, so this corruption in early Christian history has borne bitter fruit ever since.
Although in my view the words of these creeds are generally quite accurate, the music is wrong. They don’t much sound or feel like Jesus or his apostles, or like the Law, the Prophets and the Writings before them. Although this tradition never explicitly states that creedal orthodoxy is more important than obeying God, it implicitly distorts our thinking in the direction of exalting correct creedal confessions at the expense of real faith issuing in ethical conduct. In his story of the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, Jesus spoke to this question about as clearly as a man can speak, but have we really listened?
If a Christian is ill-tempered and defensive, loves money, or is inclined to selfish ambition - in general not living the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount - none of this prevents him from having a big TV ministry or holding some other responsible position. As I will shortly show, Church history makes it abundantly clear that, in contempt of apostolic teaching, even being a reviler was not thought to disqualify from high office even in the patristic Church. At most, we’ve always written off these qualities to human imperfection and carnality, understanding that we can work it out. But if, say, someone is actually doing what Jesus says but contradicts Trinitarian doctrine, having his doctrine wrong as did the Samaritan in the parable Jesus told, we’re sure he can’t even have a real relationship with Christ, and we promptly show him the door.
But what does the gospel say? Trinitarian doctrine can be found there, no doubt, but is it not far more obvious that the gospel requires us to actually be doing the stuff? The gospel speaks far more clearly against those who are hearers and not doers than to any other doctrinal deviation, doesn’t it?
Why have we, like our fathers, consistently majored in doctrinal expertise
and minored in being doers of what we claim to believe? Without experiencing
anything of the cross of Christ, we can easily put on the right doctrinal
patter, and we can even become clever theologians. But to become a doer
of his word, we need the wisdom and power of God. Jesus Christ crucified
is the wisdom and power of God (1 Cor.
Christianity without the cross often compensates with doctrinal precision
for its conformity to the world and its lack of power. When doctrinal
precision is our pride and joy, occasions for strife and for divisions are not
few. Every kind of doctrinal error is also inevitable, since as the Bible
teaches, the only way to get our doctrine right is through the process of
learning to practice the commandments of God - just as it is written, "The
commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes," (Psalm 19:8), and
again, "A good understanding have all those who do" (Psalm 111:10),
and again, "Prove yourselves doers of the word and not merely hearers who
delude themselves" (James 1:22). As one who had suffered in the
persecutions reminded the debaters at Nicea, Christ
did not “teach us dialectics, art, or vain subtleties, but
simple-mindedness which is preserved by faith and good works” [4]. “But the wisdom of the poor man is despised and his words are
not heeded” (Eccl.
The peculiar case of the Jews
Jesus Christ was and is a Jew, and forever will be (Rev. 5:5, Isa. 9:6-7). When he warned his disciples that he was
to suffer at the hands of the Jews, all understood this to be mistreatment by
his brothers, like Joseph whose brothers sold him into
Jesus made it clear that anyone intending to follow him signs up to follow
in his steps and to partake in his sufferings. In the early days, that
meant being persecuted by the Jews as he was, and loving them anyway just as he
did. Paul, who was tormented by Jews wherever he went, put it like this, “I
could pray that I myself were accursed from Christ for the sake of my brethren,
my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom. 9.3). Loving our enemies
is not a pinnacle of spiritual life; it’s just Apostolic Doctrine
101. If we say our doctrine is apostolic while we’re not loving our
enemies, we’re babbling and making fools of ourselves (James
Job’s captivity was turned when he prayed for his friends (Job
42:10). Jesus was raised from the dead after he prayed for his friends,
saying, “Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are
doing” (Luke
After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Church experienced the same
persecution from the Jews that Jesus had. In those days, they responded
like Jesus. As Paul wrote later, in this way evil was overcome with good
(Rom.
But by the fourth century our fathers in their hearts largely repudiated the doctrine of Jesus and the apostles, demonstrating their apostasy by how they responded to God’s test by the hand of the Jews. The apostolic path of overcoming evil with good was past. In defiance of Jesus and the apostles, the Church chose in behavior the path of returning evil for evil. Indeed the Jewish persecutions of Jesus and the early Christians were nothing compared to what the Church eventually did, forsaking the example of Jesus to follow Lamech the son of Cain, who repaid seventy-sevenfold (Gen. 4:23-24).
Consider these slanderous words of John Chrysostom (“Golden Mouth”) against the Jews: “Debauchery and drunkenness have given them the manners of the pig and the lusty goat. They know only one thing, to satisfy their gullets, get drunk, to kill and maim one another.” “They have surpassed the ferocity of wild beasts, for they murder their offspring and immolate them to the devil.”
Explicitly repudiating the doctrine of Paul, and of Jesus, who prayed, “Father
forgive them because they do not know what they are doing,” Chrysostom
declared that there is “no expiation possible, no indulgence, no pardon.” Again explicitly rejecting the word
of Jesus, who said, “Do good to those who hate
you” (Luke
One creative defense put to me is that Chrysostom’s words are directed not against Jews but “Judaizers” within the Church, referring to Paul’s teaching in Galatians against “Judaizers.” If so, why was Chrysostom talking about hating the synagogue when these “Judaizers” were not in the synagogue but in the church? Just the same, let’s concede this point and see where that takes us.
Nowhere in the New Testament do we find the term “Judaizers” or its implication that there is something wrong with Judaism. Even when John speaks of “the Jews” in a derogatory sense, he is clearly using the term as Daniel used “Chaldeans” to refer to a religious professional subset of the Chaldean nation. John intended us to see that the Jewish professional religious class was the captor of God’s people as the Babylonians had been, and that Jesus was manifested to deliver his Jewish people from them. In speaking against these Jewish rulers John no more opposed Judaism than did the prophets before him who denounced false prophets and priests.
Likewise, Galatians does not speak against Judaism but against a wrong
notion of what Judaism is. Paul argued not against Judaism but, using the
Jewish law, against relying on law and observing special days and times instead
of trusting entirely in God. Paul was opposing not Judaism but idolatry,
the same idolatry which had led before to reliance on
Even a casual reading of the Hebrew Scriptures, the authoritative definition of Judaism, makes it clear that everyone there who pleased God did so not by observing regulations but by listening to God, believing Him, and doing what He says. Paul himself was speaking in Galatians as a Jew, correcting his readers by the Jewish Law.
Christian church history has abundantly demonstrated that repudiating Judaism has in no way saved us from these errors, because they arise from unbelief in God, not from Judaism. The very use of the term “Judaizer” expresses a completely unbiblical repudiation of the Church’s Jewish roots, and is in fact an expression of an unjustified hatred of Judaism and therefore of the Jews.
Let’s be clear. John Chrysostom the individual does not concern us here. Our concern is ourselves. Chrysostom’s revilings, which repudiate the fundamental ethics of the gospel, were so tolerated by the Church that he became known as Saint John Chrysostom. Others of comparably excellent life like Tertullian and Origen fell short of this honor because of their doctrinal deviations.
In canonizing Chrysostom while rejecting these others, the Church plainly testified that polluting the gospel with an ethic of hatred, vituperation, and retaliation, thereby repudiating the cross of Christ, is just not a big deal, certainly of smaller consequence than the errors of such as Origen and Tertullian. History has shown that judgment to be grossly mistaken. John Chrysostom’s doctrinal deviation has had the severest consequences to this day. Having brought that cursed ethic into our house, we have applied it throughout the centuries to one another as well as to the Jews. To this day, Chrysostom is highly regarded throughout the Church - by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants, who still regard the iniquity he taught to be a light thing compared to his zeal for Christ, his principled stand against the Empress, his concern for the poor, and other positive qualities.
In truth, the Church has not hated the Jews for rejecting Christ. The Church has hated the Jews because the Church has rejected the cross of Christ in our own life. The Church has trouble with the Jews because the Church has trouble with the cross.
Hating the Cross: Its Fruit Today
The respectable gospel
A prominent feature of American Evangelicalism, perfectly evident to all outside it, is our total conformity to the respectable. Whatever sins the world despises we generally avoid. Whatever it honors, no matter how detestable to God, we are helpless to resist. A striking illustration is racial discrimination, in which white evangelicals participated as wholeheartedly as the rest of the culture when it was respectable, lifting not a finger to do away with it while others did the heavy lifting.
Once that heavy lifting was done, when racism was no longer respectable, white evangelicals finally discovered that racism was a no-no. Evangelicalism never repented of racism - we just abandoned its outward observance because it was no longer respectable. Does anyone need to ask why our gospel has no credibility among those who suffered and sometimes died to do something about racial injustice while at best we stood aloof, to this day showing embarrassment but little contrition?
Far from it, white evangelicals publicly pine after the good old days when
Those good old days also saw the dispossession and enslavement of the
peasants of
We despise the German Christians for serving Hitler and the Russian Orthodox
Church hierarchy for being lapdogs of the Soviet state, but American
evangelicals identify in just the same way with the
“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly
lusts,” says the Scripture (1 Peter
Why are we so totally conformed to the world in so many ways? Why are
we so alien to God while so at home in the
The gospel of the disreputable
Jesus clearly stated that he is revealed in the poor, the weak, the naked, and the alien (Matt. 25:31-36). In view of what Jesus teaches here, are we not called to identify with the weak and cease from our admiration of the mighty? Well, yes we are, but in that case, why is it so easy to gain applause by adopting “black theology,” “feminist theology,” Latin American “liberation theology,” and other such theologies that identify with the poor? Why is it so easy in such movements to be so morally superior with so little self-denial?
We learn from Scripture, as well as from the many pawnshops and liquor stores that prey on poor neighborhoods, that poor people are profitable. Judas stood up for the poor so that he could pilfer what they were to receive (John 12:6). Absalom called for justice in order to use the aggrieved against his father David (2 Sam. 15:4-6). When Korah spoke for the congregation, declaring that they all were holy, was he not really aiming to lord it over them (Num. 16:8-11)?
What do these have in common? Do we not see the poor in each case reduced to implements to be used by their “friends” for their own advantage? The poor know what is in the hearts of men, which may explain why liberation theology finds more favor in seminaries than in the streets and prisons.
Genuine love rejoices in the truth (1 Cor.
13:6). If love of the oppressed motivates such theologies, why do their
proponents so consistently resemble the false prophets, refusing to tell the
oppressed the truth in order to restore their captivity (Lam.
The ethic of abortion is that the stronger has the right to crush the weaker so long as the weak is inconvenient to the strong. Why then are the “feminist theologians” unable to acknowledge that such an ethic is no friend of the average woman?
When black people need to hear that blaming Whitey is not going to solve the problems of sexual immorality and drive-by shootings in black neighborhoods, where are these champions of the poor?
When the State of Israel brings God’s wrath upon itself by robbing
Arab landowners, beating up nine-year-old children in detention, and enshrining
torture in an official policy of “moderate physical pressure,” are
their friends not obliged to warn them? As they go from bad to worse, why
are champions of
Is it not obvious in all these cases that their motivation is to flatter the poor in order to be seen as their champions, rejecting the reproach of the cross in order to seek the favor of man?
Why do even the truly well-meaning end up exploiting the oppressed?
Good news for the oppressed is the
In fact, the poor man that everyone oppresses is the Truth. We all
suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom.
Glamorizing the poor and disreputable is wannabe discipleship - a cheap way to identify with Jesus without actually having to deny ourselves and endure the reproach of the cross.
“Their windows are painted white to keep the night in”
By our being crucified to the world and the world crucified to us, we become
strangers to the world. By destroying the divisions founded in our flesh,
the cross makes us able to love others who are not like us (
The blind man said, “Here is an amazing thing, that you do not know
where he is from, and he opened my eyes” (John
A while back in church, the preacher told us about how great a revival Billy
Sunday preached in Atlanta in
As I slumped there in humiliation, watching the faces of the few black people in the congregation, I wondered how it would sound to hear, in the presence of Jews, about a great revival in Nazi Germany in which the Holy Spirit moved people to stop drinking coffee. As far as I could tell, none of the other 3,000 white people in the congregation could see anything wrong with this picture!
Is it not amazing that we are more aware of Nazi Germany than we are of our fathers and ourselves? Can this be ordinary ignorance? Are we not willfully ignorant of any truth that disturbs us, living in a world of comfortable illusion fashioned by our refusal to see as others see? As Breyten Breytenbach said of white South Africans under the apartheid regime, so it is with us: our “windows are painted white to keep the night in” [6].
The daily work of the cross is to tear aside this veil of flesh in order to let the life-giving truth come in and save us. The cross disarms us, compelling us to give entry to every ill-mannered word of truth. Armed with hard questions, these truths from unworthy messengers - these vandals - trash our neat little doctrines, our systematic theologies, our traditions and conventions, our tidy understanding of good and evil. We find ourselves perplexed, rocked with doubts, having to cry to God for understanding of what we used to know!
Jesus said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That means, “Hear others as you want others to hear you.”
We are radically estranged from each other because we know that the cost of really listening, of really understanding, is to risk the shattering of our illusions, to run the danger of finding out we’re wrong about everything. We know how good this medicine is for others, for those who disagree with us - but we don’t want to pay that price ourselves. The cross breaks down the dividing wall of the barrier by compelling us to drink that medicine - and in this way the cross brings about in us the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
To feel like we have a healthy relationship with God while avoiding the
cross of Christ in our daily lives, we’ve had to develop lots of
religious defenses. Just as King Ahaz made
things worse by trusting in
Notes
1. James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 191.
2. Michael M. J. Fischer,
3. Kenneth Scott Latourette A History of Christianity (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1975 reprinted 1999), 157, 276. See also his account of the controversy between Cyril and Nestorius and the Council of Ephesus in 431, 164-169.
4. Ibid., 154.
5. For a brief collection of quotations supporting the Rabbinical doctrine of Messiah the son of Joseph who was to die, go to http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/m.sion/ze12jmi.htm
6. Breyten Breytenbach
quoted in Allister Sparks, The Mind of South
Africa (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 218.