Probably the one person in the Bible who was the best at being Christlike was Jesus. He was so good at it that they started calling him Jesus Christ, even though his last name was actually Nazareth, which is also a town over there somewhere; the town named itself after Jesus because he was famous, which was good branding.
When you are an evangelical thought leader, people are always attacking you by saying opinions that are different than yours. Whenever this happens, and I don’t have time to get my team to look up a bunch of Bible verses, I just shift the paradigm by saying that the other person isn’t being Christlike, this is called a hoc hominem attack, which is Greek for whatever it means in English.
But what does it mean to be Christlike? Let’s go back to the Greek:
Sometimes, Jesus was tough, like when he went into the temple and was like “there are too many robbers in here,” so he went into the nursery and flipped over the changing tables and the robbers left, because there was nowhere to change the diapers of their robber babies, I guess they went out to the parking lot and took care of it in their minivans.
Other times, Jesus was very gentle, like when he put that guy’s ear back on in the Garden of Eden because Peter chopped it off with the flaming sword. Then Jesus was allowed to say “he who has ears, let him hear,” otherwise it would have been ableist.
If you are a common Christian, you are not allowed to be the first Jesus, the one who is angry. You must be the second Jesus, who does not cause problems. I am allowed to be all of the Jesuses, because I have a brand, and I need excuses for when the religion reporters email me to see if I have a comment about the latest accusations. I mean yes, I may have said those horrible things to a group of children, but Jesus didn’t like children either, that’s why he told the disciples “suffer not” when he saw the children coming, and got in a boat in the Black Sea.
But back to the nice Jesus: He showed love and grace to his fellow man, and very few of you jackasses are doing this. It’s like I’m always telling the restoration committee: if you guys would stop being so judgmental, we might get something accomplished here. Therefore, to help you learn how to model our Savior more closely, here are a few pointers:
Stop being stupid
Do you think it is a good idea to murder dozens of your theological rivals with ninja stars? Think again! Jesus did not do this; he only used ninja stars for good, because he was omniperfect. That’s called theology, morons.
If you aren’t sure, do it in secret
Take a lesson from the Baptists: when you aren’t sure if it’s a sin to go to a bar to watch the PPV fight, drive one town over. If no one sees you, it doesn’t count, this is why Paul said that when you eat the idols made out of food, go into your prayer closet, so you won’t offend your brother’s conscience, also so you won’t have to share any of that delicious food idol.
Be like me
Christlike is however I am acting, and the opposite of how my enemies are acting. This is also good branding.
*Weekly-ish articles are free; periodic special articles are behind the paywall. Substack won’t let me set the monthly subscription lower than $5, so I made the yearly subscription $30, which is $2.50 a month, which seems about right. Thanks for reading :)
Thank you so much for your writing - it's refreshing and cuts to the bone.
I wish all my FB friends had a good sense of humor so I could share these. But at least I get a good laugh out of them. 😂