--Jesus and Christ

I believe in Christian Telemarketing. I believe in it in the sense that I unfortunately believe it exists. Conceptually this is what most Christians do when trying to convert non-Christians to Christianity. They give them just enough information to “reel them in” and then once they are “in” they pass them along to another person to mop up the mess. I imagine the pitch goes something like this: “Hey, do you want to burn in hell? No? Well good because Jesus died so you wouldn’t have to. But you have to be a Christian to not burn so, why don’t you become a Christian?” There are two different responses to this sales pitch. They are: “Of course I don’t want to burn. Sign me up” or “You are creepy leave me alone.” Both have detrimental effects. The former respondent is now a Christian with no clue as to what it means to actually be a Christian. They only know what it means to be a Christian after their death. They have no idea what it means to actually live as a Christian. The latter respondent is put off by judgmental language that is condemning from the start. As a minister to new converts, I would like to address the issues with the former respondent and leave the latter respondent for another venue. I would like to point out that it is the fault of Christians that we have this problem of clueless new converts. I believe it is because of the poor teachings when these telemarketing Christians were themselves young Christians. So, I would like to set the record straight. This is my answer to the problem and how we can fix it. Before we can get to that, however, I must give you some background information to make sure we are all up to speed.

As Christians we associate Jesus with being the Messiah, hence the compound name of Jesus Christ. Christ meaning Messiah. There is not a thing wrong with that since Jesus is the Messiah. However, the world has been forced to see Jesus differently. Without acknowledging that Jesus is the Christ you are forced to deal with Historical Jesus. This teaching has forced the world to deal with Jesus as a teacher and as a man. Now Christians acknowledge Jesus as being both fully human and fully divine. The fully divine aspect deals with his validity as the messiah. As Christians we are only willing to see the fully human aspect with regards to his ability to sin. Now, I know that most Christians draw back when confronted with the idea that Jesus could sin. But for a man to be tempted one must have the capacity to do the sin or the temptation is not a temptation. It is merely an option. It is the want to do the sin that causes it to be classified a temptation. As Christians this is as far as we are willing to go in viewing Jesus as a human. I believe we do not take it far enough. I don’t mean to reference whether Jesus struggled with certain sins or his personal life, but I would like to see Christians separate from Jesus his role as Christ.

This idea started with the question of whether Jesus would be the Messiah if he had only come to this world, lived a full non-sinning life and then died. No teaching and no explanations beforehand, just lived his life without sinning and then died. Since Jesus taught after his resurrection, that teaching is considered messianic and is separate from his teachings prior to death. The death of a perfect life then explanations afterward would suffice as the full duty of a Messiah and therefore my answer was yes, Jesus would still be the Messiah if there had been just teachings after the death. Upon making this statement I began postulating what the teachings prior to death were classified as if death and post-resurrection teachings were all it took to be our Messiah. This is where I decided that as Christians we need to be able to separate Jesus from his role as Christ.

Academics are forced to teach about Jesus or at least Christianity because of the influence on history. Other religions including Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism among others, acknowledge Jesus as a great teacher and a good person with wonderful ideals. They accept most of his teachings not dealing with the messiah ideals. Why is this? Because they are able to separate the teachings of a person as sound and good without a permeating urge to classify him wholly as the Messiah as well. We have already established that Jesus would be the Messiah without the teachings prior to his death so why do we classify his pre-death teachings as nothing but messianic precursors. I believe that his teachings pre-death are on the way we should live our lives and his teachings post-resurrection are messianic in nature. I know this is potentially difficult to swallow because we have been taught from an early age to associate Jesus with nothing but messianic ideas. But I feel that if we start viewing Jesus as a teacher and focus on his ministry, we will understand the problems new Christians are facing.

When a person becomes a Christian we tell them all about Jesus’ death and resurrection and what it means for their life. We make them aware of his unique place in history as the sinless man and then we give them a specific set of instructions that we have all heard more than once at some time in our lives. Such as: “We need to lives as Jesus did.” Or better yet, “We need to strive to be more like Jesus.” So based on the basics we tell new Christians about Jesus to draw them in, and the simple instructions we give them, or the telemarketing, they can rightly assume that we are asking them to be long-haired, homeless people who do nothing note-worthy for the first thirty years of their life and then do ministry for potentially three years, all the while doing nothing wrong and then dying for the sins of all mankind. Do you see the dilemma?

What Jesus did as the messiah is life-changing and important for our salvation. No one is arguing that. I am arguing, however, that the teachings of Jesus are what we need to focus on. We can learn very few things from Jesus the Messiah. We can potentially grasp God’s love, we can recognize and understand salvation, and we can receive hope for the afterlife. But all those things are ideas that are fundamentally able to be ascertained by anyone. It is Jesus’ teachings that show us a way of life and a guide to our journey here on earth. I believe instead of flippant telemarketer lessons like “live like Jesus lived” or “be more like Jesus” or even the ever popular “Christ-like” comparison, we should use “live as Jesus taught” jargon to emphasize the difference between Jesus’ teachings about Christians and Jesus’ life as our Messiah. So as Christians teach about Jesus, it would be best for the future of the church if we emphasize that the messianic nature of Jesus is life changing, but the teachings of Jesus are what shape your life to be Christian in nature.