The Poster-Boy Jesus

I am fascinated by the phenomenon known as Tim Tebow.  I am befuddled.  I am befuddled not because he won when he shouldn't - I frankly don't care.  I'm not befuddled because he displays his faith publicly on the football field.  He grew up from a very pietist context, and as a good pietist, he has every reason to "do the Tebow."  That is also why I had no issues with him being in an advertisement for some pro-life organization.  The way I see it, I think pro-choicers should put up ads of their own!

But what I am befuddled with is the fact that so many Christians are seeing him as some poster-boy Christian.  I am very befuddled because a lot of very conservative Protestants lambast the Catholic Church for their alleged "worship" of saints (they don't - the saints are... *drum roll*... poster-people of the Catholic faith).  Yet, are they not doing the exact same thing by lifting up these individuals?  Tebow is only the most recent of a long list of Protestant saints, some of whom we elect into office and when the commit some grievous sin against humanity or God, we either defend them (while dashing our Christian witness on the ground) or leave them on the side of the road to Jericho to rot.  Take, for example, Ted Haggard, who used to head the National Association of Evangelicals - and was a pastor too, to boot.  He was a poster-boy of evangelical Christianity, was he not?  And when he was found to have had sex with a male prostitute?  Boy did the community pass him by on the other side of the road!

When we start lifting up poster-boys of the faith, we begin walking on a theological thin-ice.  Of course, I am totally in favor of people being examples for others in the Church.  But examples of the faith are not the same as Christian celebrities.  Celebrities hold a certain secular-reverential quality to them because they somehow deviate from the norm.  They are different!  They thrive on their difference!  So long as we regard them as wholly different, wholly Other, they come alive.

There is only one "celebrity" we can tolerate and that is Jesus.  But I say "tolerate" because we usually have our own poster-boy image of what Jesus should  be like according to our tastes and preferences.  There's always the free-market Jesus, the communist Jesus, the black Jesus, the white Jesus, the Cubs-fan Jesus and the White Sox-fan Jesus, and there is, you can bet, a time and season for every sort of Jesus under heaven.  But if we read the New Testament correctly, we see a Jesus who befuddles us because he - to put it crassly - is anti-B.S.  I cannot read the New Testament without seeing how Jesus would be indicting every country on earth for every nit-picky problem!

In Fyodr Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is a famous section called "The Grand Inquisitor." Essentially, Ivan Karamazov tells a story to his younger brother Alyosha about Jesus visiting the city of Sevilla, Spain.  There, he performs miracles just as he did in the gospels.  Unfortunately, the Inquisition authorities got wind of Jesus and promptly arrested him.  In jail, the Grand Inquisitor visits Jesus the day before he was to be burned at the stake, telling Jesus that he is no longer needed because his presence would destroy the mission of the Church.

This is a chilling tale but nonetheless I think Dostoevsky had his finger on something important.  Oftentimes, we forget that the church is itself full of sinful creatures.  Sinfulness, augmented with the power that is free will, is dangerous to the point that the church's mission, however sinful, could sometimes masquerade that of Jesus'.  There was a time not long ago when invading Iraq was seen as a moral act by Christians!  Sin is just that pervasive, evasive, and persuasive.  Persuasive to the point where we think we're not sinning when really we are.  Before we conservative evangelicals lambast homosexuals for doing just that, we had best watch ourselves.  We are not much better - if at all.

Jesus' life turns the definition of "poster-boy" upside down.  The Jesus we read about in the Bible is not the WWJD Jesus, nor does he "do the Tebow."  I'm sure Tebow would agree that he is as fallible as any of us.  What I definitely do not hope to hear is that Tebow's success is attributed to Jesus.  That's the prosperity gospel, not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Jesus never promised success for following him - we have driven on the wrong side of the road if we read Jesus as a bringer of success.  That's Jupiter, the Roman god, not Jesus the Christ.

Furthermore, let's not forget that Jesus is not "one of us" in the sense that we'd like him to be.  He's not "my homie".  He does not hold an American passport, and even if he did, he'd be searched every time he boarded a flight (remember: Jesus was born in modern-day Palestine).  Think about it: long hair, scruffy beard, and 12 guys looking like that following him everywhere?  The TSA should've hired Judas out before the temple chiefs did!  Jesus does not play football.  He doesn't give a rip about Turkey Bowl.  I suspect the abundance of food we gorge ourselves with during Thanksgiving is anathema to Jesus, who probably would spoil the holiday by reminding us of the hungry.  So let's not over-immanentalize Jesus and render him as human-oh-and-by-the-way-also-God.  This Jesus we read about in the Bible defies our imaginations and our sensibilities.  If he did not, he wouldn't have ended up on the cross.