Karl sent over this link and I’ll now be checking out this blog fairly frequently, as it’s an interesting and challenging take on one of our images of Jesus.
Everything I’ve been reading about atonement has gone to great lengths to take into account Christ’s suffering — even though they mostly avoid directly valorizing suffering (with the exception of a few conservatives or naive traditionally-oriented liberals), it still makes up an irreducible part of the Christian experience.
The weird thing here is that everyone supposedly agrees that we need to take into account Christ’s entire life, and yet no one notices that Christ’s life was not characterized by suffering. He was obviously dirt poor, but he lived a life of singular abundance — his critics called him a glutton. He achieved this abundance not by stockpiling wealth, but by enticing people to share with him, and he recommended a similar strategy to his disciples (the 12 and the 72). From another direction: His first miracle is making some really great wine. One of his most famous is multiplying meager provisions to feed everyone, with baskets leftover. Yet the picture of Jesus we’re often presented with seems to indicate that he would tell the wedding guests that they should go without and would tell the crowds that it’s good to learn patience through suffering hunger.
I haven’t decided what to do about this idea yet, still letting “the birds fly over my head,” as Luther said, “without permitting them to build a nest in my hair.”
