Pastor Ryan Gaffney

One of my students recently put up a Blog Post. I’d love to link it here, but considering what I’m going to say about it I think I had better not for fear of inciting a flame war.

Suffice it to say she wrote about the disaster in Japan. It was honest, It was vulnerable. She referenced scripture, she provided pictures. She cried out publicly to a God who didn’t appear to be listening. Everything one would expect from a modern psalm of lament.

It should go without saying that I’m totally proud of her for the courage she demonstrated, and for the maturity of faith that invites doubt rather than feeling a need to cover everything up neatly with a little religious blanket. As a minister there isn’t much you can ask for that could be better than seeing your students grow closer to Christ.

But somebody out there decided to take the opportunity to question her motives and make her feel awful about stepping out. He accused her of failing to glorify god, because under his definition apparently glorifying God means you never let ‘em see ya sweat.

Well she’s awesome, so of course she talked to him about how the psalms contain similar statements. And that even Jesus himself says “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”

But guess what he said?

I bet you can guess!

He said “Well are you Jesus?”

…

…

And that’s how it arrives. “Well are you Jesus?” and then the conversation is over of course. Because no self respecting Christian is going to say “Yes I’m totally Jesus and what’s true of him is true of me” and once you invalidate Jesus you really can’t use evidence from the bible anymore So now we just have to shut up. My student goes home with her tail between her legs.

But wait a sec!

Are we seriously going to let him get away with that?

No, No we’re not.

I wanted to give you the context because I feel like without the context it’s hard to separate truth for emotion on this question. But my hope is that in this situation you can see that this is clearly argumentative behavior. It’s used to win arguments that can’t be won using truth. But it’s insidious. I’ve used the “your not Jesus” argument. I bet you have too, and at the time we both felt that we were right to use it, because after all the point we were defending was right… because after all it was our point…

But from an objective perspective, Like the one we get when we see it being used against my student. I think it’s much easier to see it’s wrong. If we disregard everything Jesus said or did as inapplicable because “we’re not Jesus” well frankly we just don’t have a whole lot of Christianity left to work with.

In fact even the word “Christianity” the Christ-Ians or “Little Christs” implies that we are in fact supposed to be like Jesus, to follow his example, and yes even be him.

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

So next time somebody gets into your face and tells you “You’re not Jesus” You just tell them right back “Yes I am! And you should be too!”