A More God-like Christ Part 1
A review of the book, “A More Christ-like God” by Bradley Jersak:
From the title of this essay of response one might surmise that these are “fighting words”. But that is not my intention. Bradley Jersak is clearly an educated, intelligent and whimsical man. However, I believe a critique of his thesis is warranted and I do so for the sake of those in the small flock for which I’ve been appointed to help shepherd and influence.
Jersak’s first statement is that “If there is a God…we don’t get to make Him up.” I quite agree. But if we as Americans were to make up a god in our own image, what would he be like I wonder? Jersak begins rightly with Scripture and then does a brush stroke of popular Christian voices, contrasting Piper and McClaren, for instance.
Then he quotes Bill Maher and Charles Darwin as voices Evangelicals need to heed as prophetic, affirming such atheism as a first step to true worship. In his trigger questions section he then sets Jesus against much of the Old Testament narrative and refers to this as the “Bible-God”.
His final section of the first chapter on “The Father’s love revelation” calls the God of his childhood a judgmental, threatening and condemning God. He refers to this God as the “punisher-God”, the “Mighty Smiter” and calling the words of those who presented such a view “silly.” He contrasts this to the revelation of the Father heart of God given through YWAM and Vineyard, describing the Father as one who gives hugs rather than blows. Then he states that every human conception of God is uprooted by the Cross and seeks to demolish such notions in his next chapters.
Let me be frank. If I were to make a god in my own image he would be far from the punisher-God that Jersak describes. Growing up as a good Postmodern North American I would have him be loving and fun in the sense that he would always make me feel good, he would never even dare to think about such a thing as hell, he would want everyone to have fun and that would be the purpose of our existence. In my experience the reason any person, especially a North American, would conclude that God punishes sinners is not because they want it to be true, but because it is so clearly established in the Scriptures and such persons have sought to submit themselves to those Scriptures, whether they naturally like what they encounter or not. (It is a needed critique of Evangelical Americans that some of them have used the Bible to justify a nationalistic desire to justify unjust war and even call on God to help them strike down Muslims, but Jersak could find better sources than Maher for that prophetic critique I would hope.) I can see an argument for some folks wanting punishment for other people, especially those they don’t like. But even then few would choose everlasting torment as the punishment from a human perspective. And no one would naturally come to the conclusion that they themselves deserve such punishment.
From the 10th Chapter, which is the beginning of his larger section named “’Un-wrathing’ God”, I think Jersak reveals His core issue with the Biblical texts on wrath. He describes Jeremiah’s book entitled “Lamentations” in great detail, showing unabashedly that Jeremiah understood all the horrors of what happened to Judah as God’s direct wrath on them. He then points out the beautiful saying within Lamentations, “Your mercies are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” And he calls this juxtaposition “manic”. He asks if Jeremiah can be describing the same God. Do we take it then that Jeremiah was manic? Is this not the word of the LORD? Jeremiah understood that both of these thing can be true at the same time. Why can’t we? This, I think is the core issue I have with Jersak’s understanding of the Biblical text.
(Next entry Part 2…)