THE RELIGION OF JESUS ... VERSUS ... THE RELIGION ABOUT JESUS
By RAY WADDLE

Last week David Lipscomb University did the Christian world a favor -- held a conference that raised uncomfortable questions.

Questions like, If Jesus is the only truth, then how can Christians and non-Christians get along in a crowded, violent, pluralistic world?

The result of the Lipscomb conference on religious conflict was an e-mail furor -- people alarmed at one suggestion that belief in Jesus means doing more than just declaring belief in Jesus. It means acting like Jesus, who taught love of enemies.

An old conflict within Christianity is erupting again, and many a church leader wishes it would go away -- tension between the religion OF Jesus and the religion ABOUT Jesus.

The airwaves are dominated by religion about Jesus -- doctrines of blood atonement, armageddon, Christ the only way to heaven, Christian prayers the only prayers God hears.

On the other hand, the religion of Jesus, ever the minority, shrugs off such doctrinal hammering. It wants something less abstract and more practical -- help the sick, feed the hungry, things Jesus said to do. To follow Jesus is to follow Jesus’words and deeds, not what others say about him.

The split between these two ways of doing faith is not impossible to bridge, but many churches act like it is. Some are more comfortable quoting Paul about Jesus than quoting Jesus himself; they become gatekeepers of a complex body of dogma, then self-preservation.

The other side would rather read Jesus of Nazareth than all the orthodoxy in his name. They claim Jesus for their side in a guerrilla war against grimly organized religion.

At Lipscomb, one speaker said his own belief in Jesus as ultimate Lord of Lords “requires of me to extend gracious, generous hospitality to the stranger, the pilgrim, and those who do not see the world as I see it.”

Such a humble statement is so rarely heard in the solemn assemblies of faith that it can still stir discomfort.

No wonder. It implies a revolution. It implies Christians could take the lead in world peace: the Christ-like thing to do now is love the world’s non-Christians, without subjecting them to a questionnaire about right belief.

“Lose your life to save it,” Jesus said, and, “the last shall be first”; and “the meek shall inherit the earth” -- all difficult paradoxes, rebukes to routine and conventional common sense. Only humility and sacrifice, not violence, can break the bitter cycle of world misery.

Various American brands of Christianity these days, confident in public, bear deeper signs of anger and fear, obsessions with sex, power and apocalypse, a thorough lack of confidence.

The religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus ... they need to find each other again, rub off on each other, instead of wandering alone in a wilderness of suspicion and disillusion. A deadlocked world is waiting.

(Columnist Ray Waddle can be reached at ray@raywaddle.com.)