Buddy Christ, Violent Revolutionary, and the Many Portraits of Jesus

In the Kevin Smith movie Dogma, a new statue of Jesus, nicknamed “Buddy Christ,” is unveiled as part of an initiative by the Catholic Church to rejuvenate membership and promote a cooler reputation for the Church. A cardinal (played by George Carlin) decides to retire the traditional image of Jesus on the cross and replace it with a smiling Jesus that winks at passersby and gives them a thumbs-up sign. As tempting as it might be to push Dogma aside as the anti-establishment comedic ramblings of Smith, the icon of Buddy Christ alone brings up issues relevant to Christianity, and especially to the discussion of Reza Aslan's depiction of Jesus in his new book. 

If we're not careful, it's easy to form our conclusions about what Jesus and God the Father are like based on our faulty personal preferences. Some of us want a “meek and mild” hippy Jesus, who sings Kumbaya around a campfire and helps old ladies across the street. Others see him simply as an ethics teacher like Socrates or Buddha, whose teachings and actions were over-spiritualized by later generations. I know Christians who think of God the Father almost solely in terms of a wrathful and vengeful being who can't wait to punish those who reject him for eternity. I also know plenty of people who, as CS Lewis noted, want “not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven,” one whose priority for the universe is to make sure that people have a great time while they're alive. In our quest to form an image of God that we think will benefit us or match our views of reality the most, we tend to ignore or minimize indications of how complex and multi-faceted He is. 

Scholars of the New Testament are no less immune to this than the average believer, in spite of how often many of them will hide behind claims that they are simply evaluating the historical and literary evidence. This is especially true in the three series of attempts in the 19th and 20th centuries to discover the “real” Jesus. Although the Quests for the Historical Jesus consist of the works of dozens of scholars and therefore should not be overly generalized, they seem to speak more to the cultural and academic settings in which those scholars lived than to any sort of pure objectivity (whatever that is). 

Over the last century, portraits of Jesus have depicted him as a Cynic philosopher, social reformer, and Marxist revolutionary fighting on behalf of the Jewish proletariat. As CS Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters:   “...all such constructions place the importance of their historical Jesus in some peculiar theory He is supposed to have promulgated. He has to be a ‘great man’ in the modern sense of the word―one standing at the terminus of some centrifugal and unbalanced line of thought.” 

Reza Aslan's construction of Jesus appears to fit Lewis's quote like a glove. In spite of nearly absolute scholarly consensus attesting to Jesus' teachings and practice of non-violence, Aslan depicts him as a political revolutionary against the Roman Empire. As in the gospel of Luke, he cares deeply for the poor, downtrodden, and outcast. Unlike the biblical tradition, however, Aslan's Jesus can be found planning an uprising against Rome on behalf of those people, hating non-Jews, and possessing a fierce desire to behead King Herod. 

Aslan's conclusions are questionable at best. But what unsettles me more is his implication that scholarly research of the New Testament and 1st century history inevitably preclude faith in the Christian God. As he explained to John Oliver:  “I actually converted to evangelical Christianity when I was a kid, and really burned with this Gospel message that I heard, really felt it deep in my life. And then in college, when I began to study the New Testament, I became far more interested in this historical person than I ever was of this kind of celestial Christ that you're referring to.” 

Mainstream skeptical authors like Aslan and Bart Ehrman, writers with large popular followings and bestselling books, have a responsibility to present the possibility that scholars can come to conclusions about history and the Bible that actually support or enrich their belief in Christianity. Popular Christian writers have a similar responsibility. The arguments and issues raised by the other side should not be reacted to aggressively or defensively. They should be engaged with in a rational manner. We should be able to explain why our views of Jesus are nuanced, how they are based on valid interpretations of the New Testament writings, and why it's worthwhile to take the Bible as a reliable source of information about what Jesus was like as a person. In other words, we should be prepared to defend our conviction that the Jesus that walked in Palestine 2,000 years ago is the same as the Christ that watches over us day by day. Jesus was a revolutionary and teacher of ethics. He did care deeply for the poor and outcast. But he was also the Jewish Messiah, the Lord, and my Savior.