What the God

Written by Jesse Medina

We Christians are unique people. We have our language, our own clothing, our own books, our own rituals, and even our own celebrities. We’re quirky. Some might say a little weird. But within our ranks, there is one group that comes across to me as even more quirky than the rest: former drug user/alcoholic Christians.

You know who I’m talking about. These are the folks who lived life in the fast lane for a part of their lives. They experienced all the thrills of snorting that line or drinking their body weight in liquor…every night…they know how to have a good time. But, somewhere along the way, they happened to stumble drunk into a church one Wednesday evening during prayer meeting and found the Lord. (In high school, a drunken lady actually came to the church on a Sunday evening and kept blurting stuff out during the pastor’s sermon. Complete awkwardness…especially when he scolded her from the pulpit)

I’ve known a few of these people and had the opportunity to hear how they try to evangelize their old friends.

“Don’t get high/drunk off that stuff, brother, come with me to church and get high/drunk off Jesus. You’ll never be higher/drunker.”

This make sense. Call it speaking their language. Meeting them where they are at. Becoming all things to all men. Want high/drunk people to get saved? Appeal to those desires…and tell them about Jesus’ intoxicating powers. Share with them that story of when he turned hundreds of gallons of water into wine. Talk about his ascension.

That’ll get ‘em.

I’ve always imagined those situations looking a little different:

“Don’t get high/drunk off that stuff, brother, come with me to church and get high/drunk off Jesus. Actually, I’ve got some Jesus right here in my pocket. Let’s go out back and smoke him.”

Getting high off Jesus would be a lot easier if you could bring him to the party, whip him out half-way in, and light him up in the basement.

But there is a danger to this whole notion of getting high/drunk off God. To demonstrate why I feel it is dangerous, I present to you how ridiculous it would sound to use the same method of evangelism for other sinning types:

• For pornstars: Come to church and have Jesus orgasms!
• For strippers: Come to church and get naked before God!
• For prostitutes: Come to church and let Jesus pay the price for you!
• For murderers: Come to church and kill the Lord!
• For greedy people: Come to church and let God bless you with stuff!
• For thieves: Come to church and steal some Jesus!
• For bestiality: Come to church and meet the Lamb of God!
• For cannibals: Come to church and eat Jesus’ body!
• For lusters: Come to church and gaze upon the Lord!

What do you think? Have you ever been high/drunk on God? Can you think of other examples of bad evangelism?

Written by Jesse Medina

I’ve heard it said that back in the day when God first started revealing himself to people – you know, Noah, Abraham, Moses – that people thought it was non-sense that anyone would believe in one god. Supposedly, most folks practiced polytheism and had a god for everything (this is not the same as how many Christians think there’s a spirit/demon for everything).

The Jewish people were unique in that sense. And then Jesus came along and exploded everyone’s heads – and by “heads” I mean “conceptions of God.” He started walking around equating himself with God. Of course, to the Jews, this was highly offensive, they knew there was only one God…and Jesus wasn’t very god-like. I mean, he wasn’t semi-transparent. He didn’t have eagle wings. He didn’t sometimes act like the smoke monster. Oh, and he had a body, a human one.

Apparently the Jews think that automatically excludes someone from being God…haters.

And then there’s the Holy Spirit who at one point did have wings (albeit of a dove).

So you have the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit – and the early church says they compose one God. One in three, three in one. Mysterious. Beautiful. Incomprehensible.

But Christians don’t like that crap, so we began to think up how it could possibly be. The following are the results of the best amatuer scholarship on this topic.

An Egg

Think about it. You have a shell, a yolk, and some white stuff. Maybe God’s like that. Obviously, God is the shell because he’s white. The Holy Spirit could be the white stuff because he’s (she’s?) semi-transparent. Okay, the Holy Spirit is not semi-transparent, but just flow with me, here. And Jesus could be the yolk because…I don’t know…its yellow? Jesus could have been yellow, you don’t know.

Water

Liquid, gas, solid – boom – three in one, one in three. They are all water and, yet, they’re all different.

Us

Body, soul, spirit – that’s what humans are. I’m not entirely sure how our soul is different from our spirit, but I know that a lot of Christians think so. Problem with this theory: it doesn’t really translate since these three supposed parts of a human can’t operate separate from each other.

Speaking

I got this one from an old college professor (old in that he is no longer my college professor, not that he was old). It goes like this: God is the man who speaks, the word he speaks is Jesus and the breath with which he speaks is the Holy Spirit. At the time this one definitely beat the others.

But I’ll be honest, I’m over all this trying to understand the trinity business. Why does it even matter? And if we believe God is actually God, we can affirm, without much difficulty, that we can’t really understand everything about Him. So maybe we should just confess that we really don’t understand, but that we believe it nonetheless.

No?

What do you think? Have you heard other ways of understanding the Trinity? Which do you think is the best? Should we even be concerned with this? Why or why not?

Written by Jesse Medina

They say that Jesus was fully God and fully man…like some sort of superhero or something. And its not that he switched modes or anything like Bruce Wayne/Batman. It is not even that he was half God and half man like a spiritual Tumnus (but with a cooler beard). Nope, he was fully God and fully man.

They also say that God can’t sin. I like to picture it like Jim Carrey’s Liar, Liar – you know, where if God tried to sin his face would get all crazy and he’d beat the crap out of himself in heaven’s bathroom. It makes sense, I guess…if God could sin, he probably wouldn’t be God-like. He’d just be some dude who can get away with whatever he wanted. Kind of like Tiger Woods except less black and he wouldn’t get caught.

So it begs the question…could Jesus have sinned? I mean, aside from the fact that it would change some things for the crucifixion with him not being spotless anymore, if he had wanted to, could he have sinned? Or would he turn into a bearded Jim Carrey in a tunic and say things like,

“No, Peter, I do not think your butt looks good in that robe.”

“I know you want to believe he is in heaven, but he’s actually burning up right now in hell.”

“Eh…I’ve had better…wine.”

There are some who think that because Jesus was 100% God he couldn’t have sinned. After all, God can’t sin. Sin is disobeying God and he can’t disobey himself, right? Plus, if we believe that God is actually good, we have to believe that he couldn’t do any bad, under any circumstances.

Then again, if he couldn’t have sinned, how could he be tempted? If he couldn’t have sinned, couldn’t he just say to Satan when he was tempting Jesus in the desert, “Dude, it doesn’t even matter, I couldn’t turn that rock into bread even if I wanted!”

But if he could…does that make him not 100% God anymore? Or would that have nullified the point of the cross?

I propose that Jesus had to have been able to sin for three reasons:

1. He thought he could. That’s why he was tempted. I mean, you cannot be tempted by something you know you couldn’t have even if you wanted.
2. He wouldn’t be fully man – by that I don’t mean he’d be like Clay Aiken. As men, we sin – or at least we have the ability to. The ladies are probably very surprised by that revelation, but its true. Without the ability to sin (i.e. free will), he would have ceased to be human.
3. It would be cheating. Like unlimited lives in video games or a deck of cards up his sleeve. You can’t convince everyone that you’re a man only to pull one over on them by really not being very man-like at all. Nobody likes a cheater.

What do you think…could Jesus have sinned if he wanted to?