I live and work in the Bible belt. Some call it the buckle on the Bible belt. There are more churches per capita in this county than almost anywhere else. And what I have called folk religion is rampant. It appears on bumper stickers, T-shirts, church marquees, even billboards. I know that’s not unique to this location, but what sociologists call the “religious ecology” of this region seems especially prone to it.
The other day I was walking my granddaughter around the local mall to get out of the house and the heat. I saw several religious themed T-shirts on people. One stood out as particularly curious and somewhat shocking. It was black with red or white letters (I can’t remember which now) saying “I KILLED JESUS.” A youngish man (probably in his twenties) was wearing it. I’ve never seen that one before and wondered what message he was trying to send (if any, because some people just put on any old T-shirt–obviously!) and what he hoped to accomplish with the slogan.
I assumed it was an evangelism tool. He probably wanted people in the mall to ask him why he killed Jesus or what he means by that. Then he could launch into an explanation of the gospel–as he understands it, at least–and possibly give the person an invitation to “receive Christ.”
First let me say I admire the courage it takes to wear a T-shirt like that. But, second, I have to say in this particular part of the country it doesn’t take as much courage as elsewhere. Probably most people in that mall that day understood what the slogan meant. I watched the young man for a long time and nobody asked him about it even though he mixed and mingled with crowds in several parts of the mall. (I wasn’t stalking him; the mall is small enough you don’t have to stalk someone to see them often as you both walk around it.)
Third, at risk of sounding like an old curmudgeon, I have to say this T-shirt and its slogan is evidence of a trend I have noticed in Christian sloganeering. Go to any Christian bookstore and look at the T-shirts on display. There is a tendency for Christian messages on T-shirts and bumper stickers (etc.) to become more imitative of the value placed on shock in popular culture. I’m not at all sure Christians should join in with that trend and make a “gospel message” a shocking “hook” to try gain attention.
Fourth, I have real problems with the message “I killed Jesus.” Who does the Bible say killed Jesus? The one verse I can think of that explicitly says who killed Jesus is 1 Corinthians 2:8–“the rulers of this age.” There Paul is referring not to the Jewish or even Roman officials who prosecuted, sentenced and physically killed Jesus but to the “powers and principalities” Paul refers to in Romans 8:38 and Ephesians 6:12 (I still believe Paul wrote Ephesians).
Now, of course, the T-shirt slogan “I killed Jesus” is probably meant to convey the idea that MY SINS and YOUR SINS killed Jesus in that he died because of them. Simply to jump over “I contributed to Jesus’ death” to “I killed Jesus,” however, is unjustified even if well-intentioned.
I long for the day where a pastor (or theologian!) could pull a person wearing such a T-shirt aside and lovingly exhort him or her not to wear it. (I used to do this with undergraduates occasionally. One came to class wearing a T-shirt that said “Porn Star.” It was “Parents Day” on campus and I told him that was not a shirt to help the college’s image! He seemed genuinely confused when I asked him to turn it inside out. Another student came to class wearing a T-shirt that said “Kill a Commie for Mommy!” Needless to say, I asked him to turn it inside out. He seemed equally nonplussed by my request.)
So what should a T-shirt wishing to express something about Jesus’ atonement say? I’m not sure there can be a T-shirt sized expression of atonement. The “I killed Jesus” slogan probably is meant to put the penal substitution theory (although I doubt the young man would consider it merely a “theory”) in a nutshell. The logic, I take it, is that I, together with everyone else, caused Jesus’ death in order that God could forgive us. There’s some truth in that, in my opinion, but “I killed Jesus” highlights too much the violence aspect of the atonement–as if that’s the central truth.
To get to my main point here: This T-shirt and slogan is part of the “public relations problem” penal substitution has today. Many thoughtful Christians are drawing away from (to say the least!) any idea of substitution in the atonement BECAUSE of the popular, folk religious interpretation of the penal substitution theory which is that God wanted to send us all to hell forever but Jesus convinced God not to do that by appeasing the wrath of God by his death. In other words, God hated us, but Jesus changed his mind.
I keep reading anti-penal substitution theologians (and non-theologians who dare to write about it!) who have completely misunderstood the classical meaning of penal substitution (going back to Anselm’s satisfaction theory) OR have latched on to one aspect of it, blowing it all out of proportion. That objectionable aspect is, of course, the idea of God’s wrath. It is assumed by many critics of penal substitution that love and wrath cannot be held together. Therefore, many of them adopt the Christus Victor view or the Moral Example/Moral Influence View. Some even attempt to pit the ancient Recapitulation view against penal substitution as if they are necessarily opposed.
Some critics of penal substitution (or any substitutionary view of the atonement) talk as if ANY reference to God’s wrath is tantamount to fundamentalism. They forget, apparently, that H. Richard Niebuhr famously described liberal theology as “A God without wrath, brought men without sin, into a kingdom without judgment, through the ministry of a Christ without a cross.” And both Barth and Brunner emphasized the wrath of God AND held something close to the penal substitution view of the atonement.
I have recently read three books that deal with the atonement from evangelical perspectives and find ways to preserve the substitutionary aspect of the atonement WITHOUT fundamentalism or “divine child abuse” or extreme emphasis on wrath or violence. These three books could, if read, clear up a lot of confusion about the atonement without reducing it to penal substitution and without discarding that motif entirely.
They are: Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross by Hans Boersma, A Community Called Atonement by Scot McKnight, and Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (second edition just released) by Mark Baker and Joel Green. In my next post, part 2, I will talk about these three books and what they have to offer. All of them affirm a substitutionary aspect of the cross without reducing it to that or justifying the “I killed Jesus” folk religious cliche.
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