by Roland Wrinkle
“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he- quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion”…”Safe?” said Mr Beaver … “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
“In the Beginning…” I don’t come to the bible and faith with much of a tradition. Actually, no tradition. I was not raised as a church-going Christian. I never went to Sunday school. I had little contact with the Christian faith. I never came close to reading any page of scripture. The first half of my life was spent, not as an atheist and not even agonistic. I just wasn’t concerned with biblical matters. Then, halfway through my span, I started to read and study the bible and I continue to read a whole slew of books about the bible. You hear many stories of folks who were raised in strict or conservative evangelical families and churches, sometimes with rather sad and regrettably scathing experiences. They leave the faith (as scolding, abusive, judgmental and hypocritical) and then return later in life to discover that Christianity and the bible never supported their negative experiences. That’s not me. I just didn’t care. However, by coming to the faith unburdened by overwrought and negative fundamentalism, I would say that I have a somewhat unique vantage point. As a nonbeliever, I was nonetheless a part of the culture and knew generally what Christians were supposedly supposed to think. So, when I started reading the bible, I could compare what I was actually reading with what I was told the Christina faith was all about. In many respects, the two just didn’t match up. The bible wasn’t saying what Christians were saying it said. These musings serve to frame the backdrop for the following observations.
Jesus As a Sweet, Gentile and Caring Friend With Whom You Can Take Inspiring Walks
And he walks with me and he talks with me
And he tells me I am his own
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known -In the Garden
He whispered, “My precious child, I love your and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you.” -Footprints in the Sand
Since Jesus came into my heart,
Since Jesus came into my heart,
Floods of joy o’er my soul like the sea billows roll,
Since Jesus came into my heart. -Since Jesus came into my Heart
I may have doubts and fears
My eyes be filled with tears
But Jesus is a friend who watches day and night
I go to him in prayer
He knows my every care
And just a little talk with Jesus makes it right -Just a Little Walk With Jesus
These Lovely Sentiments Are Undoubtedly Inspiring, But Are They Biblical?
If we’re going to go by the actual words of Jesus, “friend” is not something he called his disciples…with one exception: Judas. “Friend, do what you came to do,” Jesus told Judas when he came to betray him (Matthew 26:50). No one in the entire New Testament describes him as their “friend”…with one exception: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they [this generation] say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’” (Matt 11.19)
Jesus is our Lord. Jesus is our King. We are his subjects. Paul used the word doulos, which means either slave or servant, to describe his relationship with the risen Son of God. When Paul first encountered Jesus, he was knocked off his horse by a flashing light from heaven. (Act 9). He was rendered blind. Referring to Paul, Jesus said, “This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” (Acts 9 again) The New Testament is loaded with quotations from Jesus telling his disciples that they would suffer for following Jesus. “[Y]ou will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.” (Matt 24).
There is one passage in which Jesus calls his disciples his friends: “You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:14,15). But he calls them friends in the sense that he is being honest and not keeping any secrets from them. And, yes, Jesus and his disciples do go for a walk together in a garden. But it was not to tarry there and share a joy no one has ever none. Quote to the contrary, it was the garden where Jesus would be arrested. It was the garden where Jesus descended into the depths of agony, to the point of sweating blood. The dictionary defines Gethsemane as “a place or occasion of great mental or spiritual suffering.” What were his “friends” doing? They fell asleep. Later on, they would disavow and desert their “friend” Jesus.
There are clear indications in scripture that Jesus does in fact consider all of us friends. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus told us (John 15:13). And that’s exactly what he went ahead
and did. So, I’m sure that “What a friend we have in Jesus” is an appropriate song to celebrate Jesus’ love for us.
Here’s My Concern: While Regaling in Our “Personal Relationship” With Jesus, We Can Lose Sight of Everything That Jesus Was, And Is, And Will Be…And It’s Not the Portrait Of A “Sweet Jesus.”
God did not become human so he could be our great friend, serve as an unmatched moral example or go down in history as the paradigm of an ethical philosopher. He came to do so much more…and most of it is anything but “sweet.” Let’s take a look at who the bible says Jesus was and what he did:
- He overthrew all the power structures of the world.
- He stormed the gates of Rome leading the army of the righteous.
- He utterly obliterates the violence of mankind.
- He “heap[ed] burning coals” on the heads of his enemies [by feeding them when they’re hungry].
- He wielded all the power of heaven.
- He fought like hell each day of his last week on earth.
- He was a baby in a manger, against whom the most fearsome Greek monster-gods could not prevail.
- He was tested and tempted by Satan himself and, after not eating for 40 days, he outwitted, outlasted andoutmaneuvered the Evil One himself.
- He stood up to, and made fools of, the religious elite of his day.
- He overthrew the merchants’ tables outside the temple, while yelling at them.
- He set standards of conduct that made the Ten Commandments look like child’s play.
- He challenged the religious laws of his day.
- He portended really bad things for the rich and privileged, arrogant and powerful.
- He turned the world upside down (i.e., right-side up).
- He upbraided his best friend and called him “Satan.”
- The death dealers of the mighty Roman Empire couldn’t annihilate him.
- He boldly predicted the total destruction of the Second Temple that was so precious to priests, preachers and pastors ofhis day.
- He promised his followers that they would be persecuted and killed.
- He foretold of a day when all would “flee to the mountains” and told them “how dreadful it will be in those days forpregnant women and nursing mothers!” And that “there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the worlduntil now—and never to be equaled again.”
- He didn’t resist when the Roman guards and Jewish police came to arrest him.
- He outsmarted the Roman governor tasked to discredit him.
- He was abandoned by his best friends.
- He was violently rebuked by crowds that cheered him days before.
- Contemplating his own painful execution, he sweat blood.
- He had railroad spikes driven through his wrists and ankles with a sledgehammer.
- He was publicly displayed with no clothes on.
- He labored a mile carrying a wooden cross the weight of aBuick.
- He was tortured and humiliated.
- He was executed alongside common criminals.
- He hoodwinked all the evil in the world and nailed it all to thecross.
- He died so hard, it caused an earthquake.
- He burst through a stone seal which was as secure as Roman guards could make it.
- He wields the power of life and death.
- He will lead the battel against evil, riding a white horse, brandishing a two-edged sword.
- He will mightily dispatch all evil.
- He will destroy death itself (and used starkly violent imagery in doing so).
As For Me and My House… Personally, having a dominate image of Jesus as a friend who can hold my hand as we walk through gardens or on beaches, is a little like calling a hurricane a refreshing breeze. I am infested with sin. I have a zero chance of spending eternity with God who created a paradise for me which I rejected. That is, until Jesus of Nazareth did everything the bible says he did during those earth-shattering and world-changing three years 2,000 years ago in Palestine, and critically and foremost, going to his execution, bleeding from spiked lashes, and dying …for me. For my salvation. So that my name can be written in the Book of Life. So that he will be my god and I will be his people. So that I may freely walk into the Kingdom of God and spend eternity in God’s new, renewed and perfect creation. It is a promise, a promise that will be kept, like all of God’s other promises. But a promise that came with a horrible price. A price paid by…my “friend” Jesus.