Jesus can become an idol

Declan and I talked about the new golden statue of the current president this morning, and it's contrast with the teachings of the gospels and Wisdom of Laotse which we've been contemplating. The urging of both writings is to seek humility, and the special importance of that virtue for those in positions of leadership. The conversation reminded me of a passage from Sleeper, Awake: 40 days of companionship for the deconstruction process, which I've excerpted below.

While not directly addressing the issue of gold statues, it's hard not to think of golden calves, and the golden-haired gun-toting Jesus currently being forged in our nation. And so, it turns out that...

Jesus Can Become an Idol

The idea that Jesus can become an idol is likely to be labeled nonsensical or heretical by those who call themselves Christian. If this is your reaction, stick with me for a few minutes to explore the possibility.

The eternal question of why evil exists is explained in religions around the world through stories of counterbalancing gods of darkness and light. Christianity offers a variation of the concept by presenting two distinct deities: the jealous, vengeful god who thirsts for blood in appeasement of his anger, and the sacrificial savior god who offers himself to satiate that thirst. Our insistence that Jesus is the stand-in for millions of sacrificed pigeons, goats, and oxen fetishizes him into a totem figure in the shape of a slaughtered lamb. The hyper focus on his death and resurrection has become a shoddy graven image of the Creator’s magnificence.

When we stop perseverating about Jesus as sacrifice for our sins, we realize he is a role model for unlearning. He released a tsunami of faith deconstruction, constantly preached rethinking, and castigated those who made stringent demands about righteousness through rule following.

The first person to encounter the resurrected Christ was Mary Magdalene, a woman who was so intimate with Jesus that she kissed his feet. When he appeared in the garden outside his tomb, Mary tried to hold on to him but Jesus pushed away her clinging.

That message is for all of us. The man Mary Magdalene perceived wasn’t the full truth of his being. By letting go of a Jesus she understood, trusted, and loved, Mary Magdalene was able to embrace something much more profound. When we stop clinging to an idolized Christmas/Easter Christ and seek deeper universal resonance and meaning, we can also experience a relationship beyond our imagining.

Let’s all set down the Jesus idol, and look deeper.

If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

Voltaire

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 Suzanne DeWitt Hall (she/they) is the author of the Where True Love Is devotional series, the Living in Hope series of books supporting the loved ones of transgender people, The Language of Bodies (Woodhall Press, 2022), and the Rumplepimple adventures. You can find a full list of her work here: https://amzn.to/3vVPF