White Americanized Christians in large numbers keep failing Jesus 101 — even though it is an open-book test.
The one thing Jesus so often called his followers not to do is continually being done. That is to not be driven by fear.
Yet fear of losing one’s cultural dominance is precisely what drives the pursuit of personal privilege over the basic principles taught by Jesus.
On the other hand, the one main thing that Jesus told his followers to do is so often left undone.
That is, to love God fully and other persons broadly. Yet excuses of every kind are offered to justify ongoing cruelty toward vulnerable children of God.
There are no pop quizzes. These are the same tests that have been given since Jesus rounded up some fisherman and others — telling them that sacrificial love is what distinguishes them as his disciples.
And class enrolment was never closed. Jesus threw open the doors of the classroom to “whoever wants to be my disciples.”
Requirements are the same now as then: to turn from one’s selfish ways and follow him.
That’s it. No trick questions.
But let’s be honest. Overall, today’s classes are not doing very well. And students of the master teacher are not graded on a curve.
For those willing to crack a book, the correct answers may be easily found in the red letters of the New Testament. Yet those divine directions are often ignored in favor of strident voices that reinforce ugly, damaging and conflicting ideologies.
It must be frustrating for the teacher — to see these basic, oft-repeated instructions continually rejected.
One may wonder why so many professing Christians keep getting the wrong answers to what it means to follow Jesus. But the answer is both clear and painful.
It is because white Americanized Christianity today is not primarily focused on following Jesus. It is primarily about protecting and advancing a nationalistic ideology of privilege — rooted in an identity of whiteness.
That reality, as it often is, can be denied. Yet those familiar denials, deflections and defensiveness don’t make the reality less true.
It is a well-documentable observation that so many professing Christians today will tolerate and even empower all kinds of evil if it serves their personal benefit and seeks to eliminate well-stirred fears of others.
Of course, they prefer doing it by proxy if possible — thinking like Pontius Pilate that a little distance might serve as a hand cleaner.
In doing so they enable and defend those who demean the most vulnerable among us and destroy families with ease if not glee — acting as if somehow those evil actions fit into what Jesus expects of his disciples.
To easily prove this point, just toss out what Jesus actually said and did — and wait for the backlash. Not from those who don’t embrace the Christian faith, but from the throngs who most loudly and proudly consider themselves to be devoted Christians.
They scramble for isolated biblical texts — seeking to justify injustices — as if such abuses of the Bible trump how Jesus called his followers to live.
It is not the so-called heathens, secular humanists or suspected liberals who keep failing Jesus 101. It is boastful Christians who keep downplaying or rejecting the essential and defining teachings of Jesus regarding what it means to be his faithful disciples.
Some remediation is in order when those who’ve been through baptismal waters — and professed Jesus as lord — keep placing a higher allegiance on an earthly lordship of fear, untruth and exploitation.
Fortunately and hopefully, class has not been dismissed. Jesus keeps handing out the tests.
John D. Pierce is director of the Jesus Worldview Initiative (jesusworldview.org), part of Belmont University’s Rev. Charlie Curb Center for Faith Leadership. Join us for the first Jesus Worldview Conference, October 13-15, in Nashville.