Without Jesus

What are we without Jesus?

By "we" I mean those of us who claim to be Christians, those who believe in him, who try to follow him.

And by "without" I don't mean separate from him in a way connected to salvation. I mean when we try to be Christians without his spirit, without his example, without his teaching and without his grace.

First, we can be moralists. We can become obsessed with doing right (or more often doing wrong) and our faith can quickly become a soul crushing weight of things to do and things to avoid doing. And that's just when we look at ourselves.

When we turn that same attitude on other people. we can be judgemental. The same obsession and fear of anyone doing something we consider wrong can ruin relationships and block opportunities there might have been for genuine gospel conversations.

Taken to an extreme, we can become the religious thought police. The phrase was coined by George Orwell in 1984 but the same attitude is present in many Christians. Whereas moralism and judgementalism often manifest themselves with regard to ethics and behaviour, the Christian thought police are more interested in people's beliefs and doctrines. Rather than appreciating that, on many secondary or fringe issues, there are a range of legitimate viewpoints among Christians, the thought police pursue a narrow path of what they consider orthodox and oppose anyone who disagrees with them on any doctrinal point.

As an evangelical Christian myself, I think it fair to say that these three tendencies are all dangers that evangelical Christians are sometimes drawn towards when they take their eyes off Jesus and how he lived and dealt with others.

But there are also dangers in acting "without Jesus" for our liberal brothers and sisters

We can become amateur social workers or aid workers whose activities while laudable in helping those in need can become indistinguishable from their secular counterparts. Jesus and his good news of personal salvation, social change and cosmic renewal are the only distinct things we have to go people.

In a similar fashion, liberals can become political activists with their eyes totally focused on the political and economic problems in this world and little thought of the spiritual problems that beset us all as human beings or that the only way to really address those issues is by the renewal of the Holy Spirit and faith in Jesus Christ.

At times evangelicals have been guilty of teaching a truncated gospel which is all about the next life with little to say about the current state of the world. But liberals too often, if they teach anything substantive at all, teach an equally truncated gospel with little to say about sin, atonement and salvation—in short a "gospel" without the good news of Jesus Christ and what he has done for us.

Jesus taught the truth, Jesus wanted people to live good lives, Jesus helped people without falling into any of these traps.

All we have is Jesus. And the gospel—the message of who he is and what he has done—is the only distinctive thing we have to give people.

You know the old Oxfam proverb: 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.'

We need a similar motto as Christians. 'Tell a man how to live, and you alienate him for one day; give a man Jesus and you change him forever.'