We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Uncrossed
Did any of you catch SNL this weekend? They did a parody of Tarantino’s DJango Unchained called DJesus Uncrossed. Many were deeply offended by the depiction of Jesus in this, but David R. Henson blogged about how this skit revealed what we’ve already been doing for quite a while as a culture. In his blog post, entitled DJesus Uncrossed: Tarantino, Driscoll and the Violent Remaking of Jesus in America, he points out that “we’ve been trying to uncross Jesus for decades in this country, long before SNL got their pens into him.” This is why the cross is so central to who Jesus really is and what he came to do. When we uncross him, it’s very easy to bend him into our own violent imaginings. Although we disagree with the author’s assessment of the Jesus found in the book of Revelation (see Greg’s blog on this from 2010) we wholeheartedly agree with the rest of his thoughts.
Let’s pattern our lives after the God most truly revealed in his humble sacrifice out of love for all of us.
From David’s blog:
We have tried to arm him with our military-industrial complex, drape him with our xenophobia, outfit him with our weapons, and adorn him with our nationalism. We’ve turned the cross into a flagpole for the Stars and Stripes. We have no need for Tarantino to reimagine the story of Jesus into a fantasy of violent revenge. We’ve done it for him. We’ve already uncrossed him, transforming him from a servant into a triumphalist who holds the causes and interests of our country on his back rather than brutal execution.
Category: General
Tags: David R. Henson, Jesus, Mark Driscoll, Picture of God, Religious Idolatry, Violence
Related Reading
God’s Dream for the World
The future doesn’t yet exist—which is why it’s future instead of the present or past—this doesn’t mean I’m claiming the future is wide open. To the contrary, it’s very clear from Scripture that God has a great plan for the future, and this plan steers the course of history by setting limits on what can…
The Cruciform Center Part 2: How John’s Gospel Reveals a Cruciform God
In the previous post, we looked at how the Synoptics illustrate the centrality of the cross. While the Gospel of John varies in its structure and language from the Synoptics, the cross remains at the center. This centrality is expressed in a number of different ways. 1. The role that Jesus’ death plays in glorifying…
The Cross Reveals God’s Love
The central way Christ functions as the perfect image and exact representation of God is by dying on the cross. While Christ’s entire life manifests the true God, Christ came primarily to die. It was his death that defeated the devil and freed us from bondage. The one who does what is sinful is of…
Jesus and His Father
Greg addresses a question from a reader about the nature of the Godhead. If Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, what does this mean about the Trinity, if there are indeed three distinct persons?
A Brief Theology of the Trinity
“The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.” This is the maxim introduced by the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner that should shape our discussion of the Trinity. It is simply a short-hand way of saying that since the way God is toward us in Christ truly reveals God,…
Sermon: The Twist
In this sermon clip, Greg Boyd discusses how when you read a book with a twist ending, the ending reframes the entire story. The Bible is no different. In this sermon, Greg shows how Jesus’ message reframes how we are to understand the Bible, and he shows us why the Anabaptists shared this belief. You…