This post is kinda inside baseball for those who identify in some sense as “Christian.” And it’s my opinion/observation.
But I have to say, you cannot understand Christ and Christianity unless you see it from the position of the oppressed.
Jesus is not Lord of empire. Jesus is not Lord of capitalism. Jesus is not Lord of wealth, of power, of dominance, of theft, of greed, of disunion and destruction, of separation and hate, of self-satisfaction and self-aggrandizement.
You cannot understand Jesus if you have not an inkling of the theology of the Black church. Of womanist theologians. Of theologians of the “underdeveloped” world who cannot align themselves with empire because they are themselves under the boot of empire.
Jesus isn’t the Candyman in the Sky who is going to bring treats to everyone. Jesus is the Messiah, the One who comes to set things right by his presence, and who is come to break the chains of the captives and set free the imprisoned.
If you think that’s just “spiritual” it’s because you live in the world of empire Christianity where the faith is about what you learn and repeat, whom you dominate and force to believe and behave the ways that you demand them to.
The New Testament texts do not have a model of Christianity that is just about going to a box every week to hear someone talk God talk.
Really.
The New Testament model is of community and family giving and connecting, and not a model of needing to be in power and not a model that worships power whether it’s religious, social, political, or economic.
Those of us who are raised in empire Christianity really cannot see this. We are tempted to want the state to enforce by violence our need for comfort and order which is to say we desire the state to act in our name to oppress the people who Jesus came to be with, to save, and to free.
We empire Christians can think that “God made America Christian” and that we have to take control of the state to make sure that America is Christian because by gosh that’s how it should be.
But that is not the view of the churches of the oppressed, who see Jesus as their liberator not only of the deep spiritual needs but also of their literal chains and prisons and impoverishment and want.
The vision of Jesus for empire Christianity in our Sunday Schools and sermons and theologies is really an irrelevant Jesus who does not match the Jesus of the texts.
I wish we could grasp this so that we could ourselves be free.