Leader’s Insight: Imago Me

Creating Jesus in our own image, and other thoughts from my journal. by Gordon MacDonald, Leadership editor at large

From my journal: Bill Donahue has written a wonderful book, In the Company of Jesus (InterVarsity Press, 2005), which does a great job of reminding the reader that, in all of our busyness in doing good stuff, Jesus (his mission and character) is still the front-and-center issue. Early in the book he quotes novelist Andrew Greeley: “Much of the history of Christianity has been devoted to domesticating Jesus, to reducing that elusive, enigmatic, paradoxical person to dimensions we can comprehend, understand and convert to our own purposes. So far it hasn’t worked.”

Well, that comment certainly stopped me in my tracks. I said “Whoa!” (my new expletive) when I read it. Immediately, I smelled an idea for a sermon and began to think of all the people in the Gospels who tried to maneuver Jesus on to their agenda: the crowd, for example, that wanted to make him an instant king; Simon Peter who offered “better” ideas about how he could achieve his redemptive mission; his own flesh-and-blood family who, thinking that he may have lost it, wanted to get him off the streets and back home where they could care for him; and the Pharisees who tried to tighten the screws on his thoughts about such things as Sabbath and ritual eating procedures.

I really had a good outline going. I could already taste the blessing my sermon was going to be to people. And then-can you imagine!-it occurred to me that I am regularly doing the same thing: re-engineering Jesus to fit my world. My default view of Jesus is that he was American, white, about my age, lived in economic conditions similar to mine, and prone to engage the same kind of people with whom I am comfortable. Silly, silly me! (To all my non-American friends: forgive my defective perspective. I know you would never think like this.)

Now I have to rewrite the sermon and insert myself at the beginning of the list of those who are regularly on Jesus’ back to adapt to them.

Perhaps there are better examples of people who finally got it right, but the one that speaks to me today is Thomas, the original doubter among the Twelve, who, when he got past his own silliness, simply said, “My Lord and my God.” Which is exactly what Jesus is: the Lord and God. I hear a whisper saying, “Get used to it!”

So that’s how I’m going to try to start out the new year-by reminding myself each morning when I engage in devotional disciplines that I am being conformed to him and not the other way around. I’ve been hearing this point made for about 60 years now; you’d think I’d finally master it.

source (and remainder of his article) http://www.christianitytoday.com/leaders/newsletter/2006/cln60102.html