Don’t Outlaw The Outlaw

I sort of remember the ’60s.  No, not due to the (ahem) medicinal reasons which prompted Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane fame’s quip that if you remember the ’60s you weren’t there.  I turned eleven in 1970.  Just a tad premature for any chemical experiments, as if I would have done so anyway.  But I digress.

While childhood memories are often the ones most fondly and fervently clung to, they are rather fuzzy critters.  Time molds and shifts them into recollections not altogether accurately reflecting what actually happened.  However, they’re all we’ve got to go on, so go with them we do.

Given that I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, what to previous generations or those who shared the same time span of formative years although located in a more mainstream location seemed like people, places and things that were kicked off of Mars for being too weird were to me perfectly normal.  How could they be anything but?  I had no point of reference letting me know this was something extraordinary.  Hippies and anti-war demonstrations were merely part of the landscape.  No big.

Another element of the time accepted as standard operational procedure was the radical priest.  Be it espousing liberation theology, strident opposition to the military, or an interpretation of Christ decidedly outside the norm these leftist men of the cloth weren’t seen as what they were, namely radicals.  Rather, they seemed to my youthful mind as being quite cool.  Thankfully I had a father who taught me how to separate wheat from chaff so when my salvation experience came a few years later I had accurate information as to what was and wasn’t Biblical; that and what was or wasn’t in sync with the Church’s true teachings.  That said, a trace of the rebel influenced my thinking, and to this day remains.

One of the teachings popular during the aforementioned time was the image of Jesus as an outlaw; a dashing young rebel against society and the religious institutions of the day.  A spiritual Robin Hood, if you will, who roasted the rich and praised the poor.  On the surface it’s apparent why this could be assumed.  Christ was no fan of wealth, often speaking out about how it wasn’t so much a reward as a mandate for using it to directly take care of the less fortunate.  He wasn’t being cutesy when He commented that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Jesus spoke strongly about how the pursuit of material gain could and would consume people until they paid no attention to the spiritual side of life.  While not neglecting the temporal, as some who inaccurately believe Christianity is all about sweet pie in the sky by and by when we die assume, He taught the complete view of life, one that looks past the beginning and end of our time on this planet and into eternity.

That all said, portraying Christ as a leftist is inaccurate in the extreme.  He was an equal opportunity offender.  Those who hoped He’d be a rebellious anarchist were no doubt more than a little put off when He not only said the people of Israel should pay taxes to the occupying Romans but paid them Himself (with some help from a fish).  His unwillingness to lead a revolt against Rome contributed in no small part to the crowd which a few days earlier hailed him when He entered Jerusalem calling for His execution.  And no, He wasn’t a community organizer either.

Nevertheless, to actively follow Christ is to be a radical in that it forces nonconformity with the mores and practices of this world.  It means believing in absolutes and accepting harsh truths.  It means declaring these truths and let the listener find offense where they may.  Not your problem.  You are not responsible for someone else’s head trip.  Not even once.

Certainly no believer should go out of their way to offend others.  We are called to as much as possible live at peace with everyone.  However, there is no way — absolutely no way — to tell the truth about Jesus and sin and hell and death without ruffling some feathers.  We must accept this as part of the landscape.  To not do so is to deny any genuine belief in the truthfulness of our message.

There is a touch of the outlaw in refusing to be bound by the constraints of a world so afraid of offending anyone it mutes itself to the point of being indecipherable.  We must speak the truth accurately and plainly.  We can’t worry about what the other person will think.  We’d better worry about what Jesus thinks.

And we know what He thinks about compromise.