A friend once told me that I believe in Jesus because I needed his story to be true. Apparently, he came to that long before we ever discussed what/why I believe, which is fine; most of us are trying to figure out this religion thing, and what place it should have in our lives.
But I don’t believe in Jesus because it’s convenient (it’s not) and I certainly don’t believe because it helps make sense of my world. His teachings are alien, upside down, and don’t pair well with contemporary Western values, or my desires for comfort, significance, pleasure, etc. I’ll admit that I have a need to believe in God; I don’t have enough faith to believe that this place created itself, or that humans, by their own will and power, have somehow managed not to burn it down.
I also need to believe that this God isn’t mad at me, that he/she/it sees my deepest value alongside my deepest brokenness, and still loves me. I don’t need to know how it all works, I just need to know that it’s true.
And so, almost 30 years ago, I started hanging out with some Jesus crazies, went to their bible studies, considered some things I had never considered before, drank the Kool-Aide, and began a life that is more by compassionate, merciful, generous, forgiving, loving, and peaceful than it would have been otherwise.
I’ve also grown to embrace a different understanding of power, one that is deeply insulted by all of our “America first” and Christian nationalist garbage that’s soiled our country in recent years. Having studied the bible with some vigor over the past three decades, I believe that our world’s faith in power is broken at its core. When Christians start throwing it around, claiming that it’s what Jesus wants – the Jesus that shunned that kind of power – it seems upside down to me. In scripture, too many times, the powerless are the true kings of God’s kingdom.
Below is a video that unpacks the biblical treatment of power, one that’s completely upside down from our human, typically broken understanding of it. It’s from The Bible Project, a PhD-level group expert in unpacking/exegeting the Old and New Testament texts and the cultures that birthed them.
I hope you enjoy it.
