{"id":66,"date":"2011-03-17T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/you-re-not-jesus.html"},"modified":"2011-04-22T21:38:30","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T01:38:30","slug":"you-re-not-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/you-re-not-jesus.html","title":{"rendered":"You ‘ re Not Jesus!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of my students recently put up a Blog Post. I\u2019d love to link it here, but considering what I\u2019m going to say about it I think I had better not for fear of inciting a flame war.
\nSuffice 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\u2019t appear to be listening. Everything one would expect from a modern psalm of lament.
\nIt should go without saying that I\u2019m 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\u2019t much you can ask for that could be better than seeing your students grow closer to Christ.
\nBut 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 \u2018em see ya sweat.
\nWell she awesome, so of course she talked to him about how the psalms contain similar statements. And that even Jesus himself says \u201cMy God my God why have you forsaken me?\u201d
\nBut guess what he said?
\nI bet you can guess!
\nHe said \u201cWell are you Jesus?\u201d
\n\u2026
\n\u2026
\nAnd that\u2019s how it arrives. \u201cWell are you Jesus?\u201d and then the conversation is over of course. Because no self respecting Christian is going to say \u201cYes I\u2019m totally Jesus and what\u2019s true of him is true of me\u201d and once you invalidate Jesus you really can\u2019t use evidence from the bible anymore So now we just have to shut up. My student goes home with her tail between her legs.
\nBut wait a sec!
\nAre we seriously going to let him get away with that?
\nNo, No we\u2019re not.
\nI wanted to give you the context because I feel like without the context it\u2019s 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\u2019s used to win arguments that can\u2019t be won using truth. But it\u2019s insidious. I\u2019ve used the \u201cyour not Jesus\u201d 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\u2026 because after all it was our point\u2026
\nBut from an objective perspective, Like the one we get when we see it being used against my student. I think it\u2019s much easier to see it\u2019s wrong. If we disregard everything Jesus said or did as inapplicable because \u201cwe\u2019re not Jesus\u201d well frankly we just don\u2019t have a whole lot of Christianity left to work with.
\nIn fact even the word \u201cChristianity\u201d the Christ-Ians or \u201cLittle Christs\u201d implies that we are in fact supposed to be like Jesus, to follow his example, and yes even be him.<\/p>\n

Galatians 2:20
\nI 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So next time somebody gets into your face and tells you \u201cYou\u2019re not Jesus\u201d You just tell them right back \u201cYes I am! And you should be too!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my students recently put up a Blog Post. I\u2019d love to link it here, but considering what I\u2019m 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.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,42],"tags":[43,44],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-culture","category-students","tag-defending-students","tag-lamentation"],"yoast_head":"\nYou ' re Not Jesus! - A Fear of Whales<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fearofwhales\/2011\/03\/you-re-not-jesus.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You ' re Not Jesus! - A Fear of Whales\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of my students recently put up a Blog Post. 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