will the real jesus please stand up?

lately, i have realized that we all have this image of jesus.
don’t know where it came from–sunday school, sermons, the infamous felt board cut-outs, parents, friends, school, movies, hymns, “worship” songs, the utterances of people’s mouths (whether it be used as a positive expletive or a not so positive one).

regardless, we all have our own image of jesus.
and this image, amazingly enough, can drastically differ from person to person.
so, i have been asking, searching and reading for the real jesus…
not simply the one i have concocted in my own mind.

i just finished reading donald miller’s book searching for god knows what (just for fun…imagine that!) and he talks about this in the second chapter aptly titled “imposters”.

…it seems to me we are all guilty of changing jesus around in order to make him more like ourselves. ~page19.

true. i like the jesus i ascribe to–the one who looks like me, acts like me (although definitely better), uses the same language i speak, has the similar interests that i do naturally, distastes what i distaste…and i could go on.

i don’t think anyone told me this was exactly who jesus was (like i said earlier, since we all have our own image)…i guess i just filled in the blanks. and i like jesus this way. he’s easier to know, to understand, and to figure out, i guess.

it is so much easier to worship a god, to be in relationship with jesus when i “have him all figured out, mapped out” and as donald’s pastor says, “dissected and put into jars on a shelf” (page20).
yep, that’s my jesus…the one on the second shelf in between a man’s mind and a woman’s heart. got it all right there where i can see, where i can understand, and where i can classify. got it all figured out….
don’t i?

or maybe not.
i realize, like donald,

in my life, god is always changing the way i think of him. i am not saying god himself is changing, or that my theology is open and i blur the lines on truth; i am only saying i think i know who he is, then i figure out i don’t know very much at all….and that’s one of the things you notice about jesus in the gospels, that he is always going around saying, you have heard it said such and such, but i tell you some other thing. if you happened to be a person who thought they knew everything about god, jesus would have been completely annoying. ~page21.

and, to be quite honest, sometimes jesus is annoying.
annoying because i have it all figured out, all categorized…and realize god, jesus, life, relationships, family, work, friends don’t always follow the scripts i have written for them.
annoying because just when i think i know, i realize how much i do not.
annoying because i am usually guilty of doing what i have heard to do, rather than the some other thing jesus goes around telling.

in the words and fashion of napoleon dynomite, all i can say is, “gosh!”

and it isn’t that jesus is annoying. the annoying thing is that my concept of jesus doesn’t jive with the real jesus.
i find myself being the god-imposter donald speaks about here.

you know, the real problem with god-imposters is that they worship a very small god, a god who exists to simply validate their identities. this god falls apart as soon as you touch him, as soon as you start asking very basic questions about the sanctity of all human life, the failure of combat mentality, and the lustful love of power. ~page29.

my concept of jesus is falling apart–the god i have invented in my mind to worship who looks a lot like me and lot less like the god i read about in scripture. and as i continue reading, searching, and asking, i see this jesus is totally incapable of being figured out…much like to a woman, a man’s mind and to a man, a woman’s heart.

it’s these things you simply go with, abandoning the need and desire to figure out.
instead of engaging in scientific knowledge,
you engage in a relationship…
you go along for the ride…
you enjoy the surprise, the spontaneity, the unexpected.

and in the end, or simply along the way, you see less of the jesus idol you have created and more of the real jesus standing in your midst.