Was Jesus Crazy (and Are We For Following Him)?

Was Jesus Crazy (and Are We For Following Him)? May 13, 2015

209778001_4cffdc4636_zC.S. Lewis is known for many things, but one of his statements about Jesus in particular has stuck with me. He says that either Jesus was who he said he was, or he was a madman.

But what if he was a little of both?

And if so, what does that make us for following him?

I’ve been considering this a lot lately, as I work through the year long trek I’m calling My Jesus Project, in which I’m trying to – maybe for the first time – really understand what we’re talking about when we talk about following Jesus.

Granted, Jesus spoke often in hyperbole (which some folks both within and beyond Christianity still try to interpret word-for-word), and he came from a culture whose values and symbols don’t always make sense to us, but that aside, some of what he wants us to do is, by common cultural standards, more or less nuts.

First off, he has a Messiah Complex (at least if he wasn’t the Messiah). I mean, there were scads of others going around claiming to be the Messiah, so he’s not the only one. And though most Christians embrace the idea that Jesus will return, look at how we treat people who have said they are the Son of God, come again?

Straightjacket for one, aisle two, please…

Next, he tells us to hate our bodies, and even die to self. He wants us to follow him, but tells us up front that it’s going to suck. A lot. I mean, look what happened to him and to most of his followers.

Woohoo! Sign me up please!

Then there’s his whole communication style. Consider an example below:

Disciple: Hey Jesus, we have this problem and we need your help.

Jesus: Let me tell you a story…

Disciple: Ummm…what?

Basically, here’s the message some Christians sign up for: forgo benefits and pleasures of life here for some hope of a better thing later. But you only get it after you die, and you just have to trust us that it’s really, really there. Even though we don’t personally know either.

Another perspective is simply that indulging in earthly pleasures is akin to throwing your life away. And yet, when we do what Jesus claims we should, we reject so much that the world suggests we hold dear. Sounds like throwing your life away, doesn’t it?

Reject your family.

Be poor on purpose.

Give all your stuff away and wander around (i.e., be homeless).

Talk to an invisible…something, out there…somewhere.

Love other people, including the ones who may even try to kill you, and even succeed in doing it.

Yell at fig trees.

Subvert the laws of your culture.

Challenge the leaders in your government.

Challenge the religious figures who know the rules at the heart of the religious culture you come from.

It’s really no wonder so many Christians lean on selling the “ticket out of hell” angle so often. It’s so much simpler, it appeals to the human instinct for self-preservation, and it’s less, well, crazy than the alternative.

And yet…

There’s some sense of “rightness” to it all. Not in the sense of “I’m right, you’re wrong,” but rather it feels strangely, curiously compelling. It draws us in, begs deeper inquiry, study, discernment. It pulls us together, beyond the sum total of our individual component parts. It helps us more clearly imagine the possibility of things we hope for in this world, even if we haven’t yet seen it.

It feels as if there’s a deeper sense of meaning, belonging and purpose to it all than can be achieved by adding another title to our resume or another zero to our paycheck. After all, the person who dies with the most toys still dies, right? And we’ve chased those rabbits of external status and materialism ad nauseam, to no avail. We always still want…more.

Questions remain that haunt us, like:

Why are we here?

What’s the point? 

Is there anything more important than what the world says is important?

Is there really anything worth living for, or maybe even worth dying for? 

Pursuing these questions can make anyone a little crazy by conventional standards. But considering the state of things all around us in the world, the state of our environment, our propensity for specious pursuits and mutual destruction at a blinding pace, maybe “normal” is less sane than we’ve thought.

Maybe, in the end, the only reasonable option is to go a little crazy.

Join the madness. Visit www.MyJesusProject.com, offer your thoughts, read about Christian’s “Jesus Mentors” and tell him what you think. Maybe, if you’re a little bit crazy too, think about joining him and hundreds of others who want to figure out what we mean when we talk about following Jesus.


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