Book Excerpt

"Living in Love"

Chapter 1 - If Jesus Lived Today (He Probably Wouldn't Be a Christian)

If Jesus lived today, He probably wouldn't be a Christian. Oh, He would be in His own eyes, but chances are not many churches would accept Him. The conservative evangelicals wouldn't want Him. You see, Jesus had a very bad reputation in His day. He was called, "a glutton and a wine-bibber" and "a friend of publicans and sinners."

Did you know that Jesus' very first miracle was to make one hundred and eighty gallons of wine at a wedding party. Hardly the type of person you would want to found a religion upon!

Not only that, but He made it when everybody was already drunk. As if this were not bad enough, He also had a traveling entourage of women who followed Him around. I can just see Jesus being severely rebuked by Christians today for not "abstaining from the appearances of evil." On top of this, Jesus had long hair, a beard, and no job.

This sounds like the type of person most fundamentalists would write off as a "hopeless case." The charismatics and pentecostals wouldn't want Jesus either. They would dismiss Him right away because He didn't speak in tongues, which they claim is the evidence of being filled with the Spirit of God. They probably wouldn't be too thrilled with His dress code and friends either, like the prostitutes and the extortionists He seemed to be fond of hanging around with.

Those who claim you need to be baptized in order to be saved wouldn't accept Jesus. He wasn't baptized until He had already been a believer for thirty years! The liberals wouldn't want Jesus. His insistence upon being born again and repenting of sins would be a little too far to the right for most of them. Jesus wasn't the type of person to get involved in political causes either.

Once, when He was challenged about the poor, He simply responded by saying, "The poor you will have with you always." The social gospel did not seem to be foremost in Jesus' mind. It is true that He Himself was poor, but He just thought there were more pressing needs than poverty, such as the spiritual poverty all men are born with.

Jesus would probably be considered a real fruitcake by the liberals because He actually believed in a literal interpretation of His miracles. He also went around healing people and casting out demons; not a very sanitary practice for our more refined denominations.

The "name-it-and-claim it wealth-health-prosperity" Christians wouldn't want Jesus. He wouldn't be spiritual enough for them. Not only was He not wealthy, but He actually encouraged others to give up their riches to follow Him.

He also told His disciples that they would have to suffer if they were committed to Him. He healed people who didn't seem to have any belief at all (John 5 as an example) and He didn't seem too interested in using the faith formulas that people claim you must confess in order to get God to do something for you.

Yes, Jesus would have infuriated these people with His simple words that the whole Gospel could be summed up in the words, "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself."

If Jesus lived today He probably wouldn't be a Christian if Christianity were defined by today's beliefs and standards. He would probably look at what we have done with His simple words and shake His head in frustration that we could screw things up so much.

The Church has been so busy throughout the centuries trying to get its doctrine straight that it has forgotten to be wholly consumed with loving God and loving man. Not loving God in the superficial "Sunday-go-to-meeting" sense, but having a true love affair with the Creator in which your entire being is bathed in His loving forgiveness. Not loving man in the conditional "I'll love you when you dean up your act and believe like I do" hypocrisy, but a real transparent unconditional "love-you-as-you-are" love.

George Bernard Shaw once said, "There's nothing wrong with Christianity. It just hasn't been tried yet!" The point he was making was that if we would simply let God love us and let His love transform us, and then if we would love God and man in the same way God loves us, we would then be tapped into a force that would change the entire world. As a matter of fact, isn't that what happened in the first century? What would Jesus be like today if He walked the earth?

Well, He never seemed to be too interested in labels so there would be no name we could tag on Him. He would probably be today the same as He was then; the Messiah from God who came, without fanfare, seeking out people who were hurting, lonely, sick and fed up with the religious system.

He probably wouldn't care about people's opinions of Him. He would just go on with His loving business of "preaching the Gospel to the poor, proclaiming release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, setting free those who are downtrodden, and proclaiming the favorable year of the Lord."

Maybe we would all do well to get to know this Jesus. Perhaps we, too, have formed opinions about God which aren't necessarily true. Maybe Jesus never intended to be fully defined and put into a theological box. Maybe He wants to be personally experienced and known at the gut level of everyday living. Maybe He's not the prudish uptight hard-lined judge, or the prissy meek and mild sourpuss, or the socialist communist, or the flag waving patriot, or the hundred other things everyone has said He is.

Perhaps He just is who He is and maybe that's the way we should get to know Him. It might be at the personal level that we will at last find the true Jesus. Jesus may not be interested in joining your church or in supporting all of your doctrines and beliefs, but He is very much interested in you and will come to any heart that is truly open to Him.

His word then is still His word today, "Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door; I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with Me." Isn't this Jesus worth knowing?