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A meditation on the Great Reconciler, and the pieces of him scattered across our denominations. This article was published in Trinity News. Use the "Share your thoughts" link to let us know you'd like a free subscription.

By Brian D. McLaren

I am a Christian because I have a sustained and sustaining confidence in Jesus Christ. I’ve lost and rediscovered that confidence a few times, which is a long and messy story worth simplifying and boiling down to manageable length.

My original attraction to Jesus came as a young child. In my home and at Sunday school, I heard stories about Jesus. Through these stories, Jesus won my heart.

After many years of following Jesus and learning from many different communities of his followers, I’m just beginning to arrive at a view of Jesus that approaches the simple, integrated richness I knew of him as a little boy. You could say I’m finding a new simplicity on the far side of complexity. I am a Christian because I believe the real Jesus is all that these sketches reveal and more.

Up until recent decades, each group felt it had to uphold one image of Jesus and undermine all of the others. What if, instead, we saw these various emphases as partial projections that together can create a hologram: a richer, multidimensional vision of Jesus?

I am not recommending we throw each offering in a blender and press “liquefy.” Rather, I’m recommending that we acknowledge that each Christian tradition brings distinctive gifts to the table, so we can all enjoy the feast of generous orthodoxy — and spread that same feast for the whole world.

Why not celebrate them all?

THE CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANT JESUS
For conservative Protestants, the Good News centers on the Crucifixion of Jesus. By dying on the cross, Jesus mysteriously absorbs the penalty of all human wrongdoing through all of history. The cross becomes the focal point where human injustice — past, present, and future — meets the unconquerable compassion and forgiveness of God.

Jesus, hanging in agony, says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” His innocent self-sacrifice somehow cancels out human guilt.

Jesus’ cross in the past saved me from hell in the future, but it was hard to be clear on what it meant for me in the struggle of the present. Over time I began to feel as though something was missing, which gradually opened my heart to search for other ways of seeing Jesus.

THE PENTECOSTAL/CHARISMATIC JESUS
The second Jesus I met in my spiritual journey as a young adult was the Pentecostal or Charismatic Jesus — who is up close, present, and dramatically involved in daily life. If the conservative Protestant Jesus saves from a future hell by his death in the past, the Pentecostal Jesus also saves by his powerful presence in this present moment.

From the Pentecostals I became convinced that Jesus is here and now; I began to understand and expect that Jesus would continue to intervene in powerful, wonderful ways. Sadly, much of my early exposure to the Pentecostal Jesus was clouded by a technical argument: whether all those who were truly following Jesus had to “speak in tongues” (an experience of the earliest Christians — on the day now celebrated as Pentecost — involving speaking in unknown languages). The argument forced one to think in terms of “who’s in/who’s out.” I found this constant judging of in/out, us/them to be fatiguing and distracting from loving everyone I met as a neighbor.

So, for all I gained from meeting the Pentecostal Jesus, I was still unsettled. About that time I met a third Jesus.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC JESUS
Roman Catholics focus on the way Jesus saves the church by rising from the dead. Through the Resurrection, Jesus has defeated death and opened the way to heaven. Through the Resurrection, Jesus changes forever the whole equation of existence. Jesus’ Resurrection guarantees that in the end God will win. You can spend your life caring, giving, serving, and sacrificing, unconcerned about whether you receive as much as you give, convinced that you will have “treasures in heaven” that are far greater than any “treasures on earth.”

This view, called the “Christus Victor” theory of atonement by theologians, is not exclusively Catholic. It celebrates that Jesus is risen and alive, intersecting with our lives on earth and waiting for us beyond this life. In this view, Christians are especially aware of how the risen Jesus continues to encounter his followers, especially through the Eucharist, which is one reason why the Eucharist is so important to Roman Catholic Christians and their close cousins, Anglican Christians. But I sensed that if Jesus were truly the Savior, he wasn’t just my personal Savior, but was the Savior of the whole cosmos. The Eastern Orthodox Jesus would lead me into this new territory.

THE EASTERN ORTHODOX JESUS
The Eastern Orthodox Jesus saves simply by being born, by showing up, by coming among us. Through Jesus’ birth, these Christians believe two wonderful things happen. First, God takes the human life of Jesus into God’s own eternal life, and in so doing, Jesus’ people (the Jews), species (the human race), and history (the history of our whole universe) are taken up into God’s own life. God’s life, love, joy, and power are so great that all our death, hate, pain, and failures are extinguished and overcome. Second, as all creation enters into God through Jesus, God also enters Jesus’ people, species, and history. And by entering all creation through Jesus, God’s heart is forever bound to it in solidarity, faithfulness, loyalty, and commitment. God will never give up until all creation is healed of its diseases, cured of its addictions, restrained from its foolishness, reclaimed from its lost state.

For the first time, through the Eastern Jesus, I began to have a glimpse of how Jesus could indeed be the Savior not just of a few individual humans, but of the whole world. This dynamic, transcendent, and cosmic Eastern Orthodox Jesus opened the door for three more.

THE LIBERAL PROTESTANT JESUS
For liberal Protestants, the Gospel centers in the words and deeds of Jesus, the story of his life — between his birth, and his death and Resurrection. His teachings and acts of love, healing, justice, and compassion offer a way of life that, if practiced, brings blessing to the whole world. Our mission, then, is to bring the teachings of Jesus to bear on our world — not only on our personal relationships, but also on the political structures and cultural systems of our world.

For some complex reasons, some (not all) liberal Protestants will question whether some or all of the miraculous deeds recounted in the Bible actually happened. Instead, they often read the miracle accounts as instructive fictions or parables not intended by the storytellers of the early church to be historically accurate, but intended instead to convey a deeper meaning given by God.

While I believe that actual miracles can and do happen, I am sympathetic with those who believe otherwise, and I applaud their desire to live out the meaning of the miracle stories even when they don’t believe the stories really happened as written.

THE ANABAPTIST JESUS
Anabaptist Christians, not unlike liberal Protestants, find the heart of the gospel in the teachings of Jesus — in particular, his ethical teachings. Anabaptists have traditionally been wary of too much speculation about theological abstractions, such as atonement theories, literal or figurative biblical interpretation, or rites and rituals like the Eucharist.

Instead they feel their calling is to focus on living out Jesus’ teachings about how we are to conduct our daily lives, especially in relation to our neighbors. As more and more people take Jesus’ teachings on neighborly nonviolence and peacemaking seriously, our whole world comes closer to the day when God’s will is done on earth — which includes the extinction of war.

Anabaptists uniquely emphasize Jesus’ role in convening and leading a community of disciples. For them the church is not at heart an institution with hierarchies, policies, headquarters, and bureaucracy. Above all, the church is a continuation and extension of the original band of disciples, a group of people learning the ways of Jesus as a voluntary community.

THE JESUS OF THE OPPRESSED
Add one more key element to the Anabaptist vision, and you have the seventh and final Jesus — the Jesus of nonviolent liberation theology. Nonviolent liberation theology sought to rediscover the Jesus who is the hero to the poor and oppressed, and the prophet who bravely confronts the establishments of power and privilege.

This Jesus leads a band of disciples, but the liberation mind-set gives special attention to the activism of the disciples in relation to systems of oppression. Through them, with them, Jesus works for liberation of all oppressed people. In his dying on the cross, Jesus confronts the corrupt, compromised religious system and violent, unjust political and economic powers of his day through nonviolent resistance. He does not inflict suffering, but willingly suffers. In the process, the corrupt systems show themselves for what they are, sowing the seeds for their own destruction and making way for the peace and justice of God to replace them.

Brian D. McLaren is a respected authority on the church and the postmodern shift surrounding it. He is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, a non-denominational church in Maryland. He is the author of A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy, and other works.

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