You can subscribe to SBE (and several other Steve Brown projects) at iTunes.

I’m no longer on The Catholic Guy program, btw. Gotta update that bio.

I live and work in a Christian community with approximately 150 other staff members who serve in our ministry. We live close together and see each other almost every day. Even with occasional breaks and vacations, we still spend far more time together than the Christians in the average church. As a result, we observe one another’s lives closely.

In the 16 years I’ve lived in this community, I’ve known some incredibly “Jesus shaped” people. They worked and ministered in the kindness and compassion of Jesus with only modest compensation. They’ve continued to serve through illness, loss, suffering, rejection and difficulty. Some have gone the extra mile so many times that it’s not unusual to do so. Some have given generously in ways that weren’t required or expected.

In my mind, I have known some incredibly Christ-like people in my time ministering here. Of course, that sentence assumes that I know what Jesus Christ was like. In that regard, I’m pretty typical.

Jesus is a standard of measurement for human beings in all different kinds of cultures, religions and worldviews. Atheists and Buddhists are as likely to say someone is Christ-like as are. People with no interest in Christianity will say “You aren’t acting much like Jesus” or endorse “WWJD” as a reliable guide to decision making.

Have you ever heard Oprah Winfrey- a convinced new ager- reference Jesus as the ultimate example of spirituality? Or heard a politician reference Jesus as endorsing his/her policies on war or the economy? Have you ever heard someone say that Jesus would drive a certain car or eat a certain kind of food?

And then there are pastors and teachers in Christianity’s churches. How often do they refer to Jesus with complete confidence that everyone present is in agreement that Jesus endorses their church’s views on baptism, homosexuality or a new building?

I’m officially suspicious of such broad agreement about what Jesus would endorse or approve. As Ravi Zacharias says, it’s far more likely that all these differing points of view are wrong than that are all right. I believe he’s correct.

So am I contradicting my earlier claim to know “Christ like” people? No, but I am raising the issue of HOW we know what Jesus was like. I’m suggesting that we can’t simply make that claim without having engaged in some reasonable and reliable exploration of the best evidence we have for knowing what Jesus was like, evidence that will direct us to the New testament and the four Gospels.

At this point I should briefly respond to three issues and objections.

First, there is obviously considerable general skepticism among many people about the truthfulness of the Gospels. As a Christian, I accept the New Testament Gospels as reliable accounts about Jesus. In fact, I go beyond that to say that I believe they are inspired by God. Books presenting the case for the reliability of the Gospels are available to anyone.

I do not believe, however, that it is necessary to either believe the Gospels are divinely inspired or that everything Christians say about them or from them is true in order to reference the Gospels as reliable guides about Jesus. There may be significant disagreement about what and how much we can know about Jesus from the Gospels, but I believe we can build a considerable consensus for a Jesus shaped spirituality from the Gospels as they are.

In his song, “The Rebel Jesus,” Jackson Browne says.”I bid you please, I bid you cheer from a heathen and pagan, on the side of the rebel Jesus.” I would invite anyone- skeptic, atheist or believer in another religion- to consider the probability that we know enough about Jesus in the Gospels to make a substantial beginning on a Jesus shaped spirituality.

Secondly, there is a strange reticence toward using the Gospels among some Christians. In my internet writing career, I’ve been stunned to find how many Christians use Paul’s writings to interpret the Gospels and are opposed to anyone using Gospel texts without Pauline explanation.

For example, the Sermon on the Mount was recorded by Matthew to be plain and understandable; so much so that he is clearly referring to the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus says “Teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” But many Christians would insist that we can’t understand the Sermon on the Mount without additional material from Paul. While I believe Paul’s teaching on the Gospel and the Christian life are perfectly harmonious with every word of the Sermon on the Mount, I’m not afraid that Christians will misunderstand Jesus if Paul doesn’t explain what he really means!

I’m sorry to be blunt, but many Christians simply treat the Gospels as second-class literature, constructing their own canon within a canon or imposing an external grid of theology or denominational agendas on the words of Jesus. Letting Jesus speak in the Gospels and be heard to say EXACTLY what he meant at the time the Gospels present those sayings occurring is VITAL to understanding Jesus.

For example, in several places in the Gospels, Jesus says to his audience “Come to me.” In John 6, he says “….whoever comes to me shall have life.” What does this mean?

In the most literal terms, it could mean to walk up to Jesus and present yourself to him. In John 6, however, Jesus tells us exactly what he means by the use of grammatical parallelism.

John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Coming to Jesus means believing in Jesus as the true bread/water that human beings need for eternal life.

Somewhere, of course, a denomination is saying that this means you must come to them and to their way of encountering Jesus in order to “come to him,” but that wasn’t possible at the time Jesus said these words. In the aftermath of the feeding of the 5,000, there was no denomination. There were people gathered around listening to Jesus teach; people who were being presented for the first time with the choice to believe Jesus’ claims about himself and his relation to God, or to reject that. Jesus meant that to reject him or to receive him- right there in the wilderness after dinner- was a matter exactly like the simple, essential, life giving actions of eating and drinking.

Now let me be clear: I don’t believe my interpretation is special or authoritative. I just don’t think I needed to go to Romans or Hebrews or a denomination’s doctrinal statements to understand Jesus’ words that afternoon. I don’t believe we have to insert the idea that Jesus came to found something and when we come to it we come to him. I believe Jesus meant, “Come to me = believe in me,” exactly as he says by the normal rules of language.

The meaning exists in the context of the passage or of the larger book itself, and if the writer is a competent writer, the meaning will be accessible in the simplest possible terms that honor definitions, context and grammar.

I am not suggesting that everything written in the Gospels has one, simple, obvious interpretation only and there is no rational basis for doctrinal disagreement or diversity. While I have a strong view of what “this is my body” means in the context of a reimaged passover meal, I understand the case made by those who believe a literal interpretation is necessary. I don’t find every passage equally plain. Mark 13 gives me the same headache it gives anyone else.

But the material for a Jesus shaped spirituality is available in the Gospels, and it is understandable, as written, without additions, authorities or insertions.

[NOTE: I’m aware that several of the epistles were written before the Gospels and some make a case that the epistles have primacy over the Gospels for that reason. Some critics point out the development of material in the Gospels that is not mentioned in the epistles. While I accept a mainstream dating of the New Testament, I believe much of the material in the Gospel of Mark was in circulation before or simultaneous with the writing of the epistles and is in the background of the epistles. There is no reason not to consider early forms of Gospel material to be in circulation very early in the Christian era. My own case for the primacy of the Gospels rests not on the final forms of each Gospel, but on the use of the material in the Gospels for the purposes of evangelism, catechesis and teaching. Good books on the place of the Gospels in the New Testament are available.]

Third, we need to pay particular attention to the claim that tradition outside the New Testament is necessary to understand what the text of the Gospels are saying.

I believe in the reality and place of tradition, but I do not believe tradition holds the key to knowing what Jesus was like. I believe we should be on our guard against the tendency of tradition to make the actual text of the New Testament less useful for those of us who want to know what Jesus was like.

For example, did Jesus drink wine? The answer from the text of the New Testament is clearly “yes,” by any reasonable interpretation of grammar and context. While there may be a discussion of what kind of wine Jesus drank, there seems to be no discussion on whether Jesus drank wine.

This has not stopped religious traditionalists from insisting that Jesus is a teetotaler, would be a teetotaler and condemns all moderate use of alcohol as a bad witness. The kinds of reasoning used to take the plain claims of the text and produce a Jesus who doesn’t drink wine or thinks it is a big problem to do so are a wrongful use of tradition.

So, returning to the question “How do we know what Jesus was like?” I want to suggest eight possible sources of information about Jesus in and outside of the New Testament. These are not seven equally helpful sources, but they should all be considered.

1. The summary message about Jesus we read in I Corinthians 15:1-11, which Paul says is the essence of the tradition he received and was passed on to him. Many Christians just call this “The Gospel About Jesus: His death, burial and resurrection.”
2. he teaching, examples and narratives about Jesus written primarily in the four canonical Gospels
3. The implications, consequences and application of Jesus’ by Paul and the apostles, which is recorded in the rest of the New Testament.
4. The consensus understanding of the Christian community about Jesus as they experience him through the Holy Spirit.
5. Further divine revelations about Jesus made within the Christian community.
6. The perceptions and resources of those in the culture but outside of the church.
7. The claims about Jesus made from teachers outside the historic, orthodox Christian community.
8. The results of scholarship and academic study within the church and the academy.

I believe the first three sources of information are dependable, accurate and helpful in coming to know what Jesus was like, what he taught and how he lived. Obviously, all are going to be interpreted and those interpretations can be very diverse, but the amount of agreement is remarkable and useful for all Christians wanting to know what Jesus was like and to model their lives after his spirituality.

For example, there is no real disagreement on the marital status of Jesus, despite all the fireworks the past few years, and also no real disagreement on the way Jesus related to women in general in his society. There is no real disagreement on how Jesus practically participated in Judaism or how he viewed his movement in terms of political options. While we should consider the possibilities and options presented by any serious student of the Gospels, the portrait of Jesus is well filled in and remarkably free from contention on the main points.

Option four is a “wild card,” because all Christians believe in the presence of Jesus through the Holy Spirit, but there are many examples of Christians believing that “spirit of Jesus” was leading them to believe and practice things that were never part of scripture or related to anything suggested by Jesus in scripture.

It is here that we must beware of those who have Jesus speaking through silence, or who make claims that the Spirit gives new information about Jesus that contradicts foundational aspects of the Bible. When St. Francis or Shane Claiborne speak of the Spirit of Jesus and living among the poor, it is in harmony with what we know of Jesus in scripture. When Bishop Gene Robinson speaks of the spirit of Jesus moving the church toward an acceptance of gay marriage, I believe he is making an exaggerated claim disconnected from everything but a fringe interpretation of Jesus’ practice of inclusion.

Those who most stress the power of the Holy Spirit must be doubly careful to bind the work of the Spirit with the clarity and authority of scripture. Claims that Jesus is providing gold fillings or purchasing stadiums for megachurches ought to make us suspicious because they have no connection to a recognizable Jesus.

The fifth claim raises the issue of whether scripture is unique or are further revelations about Jesus being made. The Catholic church has a structure of tradition and scripture that allow some Christians to make dogmatic assertions - such as recent Marian dogmas- that are only tangentially related to Jesus. the fact that Jesus was respectful to his mother does not qualify all later dogmas about Mary as legitimately Biblical. If a claim about Jesus cannot stand on obvious clear and direct textual evidence, then it is unreasonable to say that it has been revealed that Jesus actually supports some recently asserted claim.

Enthusiasts for end-times scenarios often fall into the same trap, using complex symbolic and typological schemes to say that Jesus is carrying out some end-times plan that was unheard of before a particular teacher received a revelation. Listening to prosperity prophets like Paula White say that Jesus has ordained various financial blessing schemes is enough to make anyone run for the boundaries of plain scriptural teaching and stay there.

Options six and seven are obviously outside the zone of usefulness for most Christians, but we should be aware that cultural and/or secular scholars can sometimes see aspects of Jesus that religious people resist seeing. I often use Jesus Christ Superstar with students to illustrate the attitudes of the disciples, and one New Testament professor said that the best orientation to the first century’s many religious and political groups was Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. While these examples will seem silly to some, they are indicative of the perceptive views about Jesus that may be present in unlikely places.

Even a piece of largely worthless speculative fiction like The Da Vinci Code will open up the discussion of Jesus’ humanity, his relation to women, the nature of early Christian ideas about Jesus and many other profitable topics. While we seldom will learn much about Jesus from these outside sources, we may be helped in keeping our eyes and minds sharp in seeking to understand him.

Option eight brings us to the usefulness of scholarly study about the historical Jesus for the Christian who wants a Jesus shaped spirituality.

I am convinced there is much good here, but there is an ongoing need to separate useful insights from unhelpful speculation. The average Christian won’t be able to do the work. It’s rare for many of these scholars to make their work accessible to the ordinary reader. But others do so, and that is important.

The fact that we can not gain a perfect or unassailable picture of the historical Jesus shouldn’t stop us from benefiting from these academic studies when they touch on areas of interest to understanding Jesus. Some historical Jesus scholars, even those less than orthodox, have been incredibly helpful to me in seeing aspects of Jesus. (Marcus Borg comes to mind immediately.)

Perhaps the best recommendation I can make is the acquisition of books by authors who review, select and translate the insights of Jesus scholars into more practical and usable form. Take, for example, Mark Roberts Can We Trust the Gospels? and Lee Stroebel’s The Case For Christ. All these books will benefit those who want to know what Jesus was really like and want to learn what scholars are saying about Jesus.

Can we know what Jesus was like? I believe we can certainly know the essential facts about Jesus, and I believe we can dependable- though not perfectly- know enough about Jesus to make following him and being transformed by him into a passionate lifelong quest.

The attacks on the New Testament as a source of information about Jesus have been particularly strong the past century, but the benefit of these attacks is a vast amount of study and scholarship confirming that the Gospels are a dependable presentation of the person of Jesus. When studied with humility and care, these sources can greatly enrich the Christian’s understanding of the words and life of Jesus without distracting from the Gospel about Jesus.

Jesus is a compelling figure. Men and women are drawn to him and have found him to be a true revolutionary in every sense of the word. If we can now what Jesus was like, we can ask if we are like him. We can see the difference between Jesus and the anemic culturally compromised Christianity of contemporary evangelicalism, and we can begin the road to a Jesus shaped spirituality.

The podcast website is Coffee Cup Apologetics.

All the episodes of Coffee Cup Apologetics are now on iTunes. Go to iTunes and search for “Apologetics.”

Most Christians aren’t like Jesus.

Should we even try to be? Isn’t that impossible?

None of us can be like Jesus perfectly, but the Gospel of the Kingdom calls Jesus’ disciples to hear his call and set the goal and direction of their lives to be like him. For a follower of Jesus, Paul’s words of “follow me as I follow Christ,” are translated simply, “follow Christ in every way possible.”

Ghandi said “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” He’s far from the only one to have made that observation, and those critics aren’t holding anyone to a standard of perfection. They are simply looking for enough congruence that the claim to be a follower of Jesus makes sense.

Christians have gotten very good at explaining why they really shouldn’t be expected to be like Christ. At various points, these explanations are true. At other points, they start sounding like winners in a competition for absurdist doublespeak.

Perhaps many Christians don’t resemble Jesus because they don’t really know what Jesus was like. Or- more likely- they assume Jesus was very much like themselves, only a bit more religious.

Getting our bearings on being like Jesus will start with something very important: discarding our assumption that our personal and collective picture of Jesus is accurate.

One of the constants in the Gospels is the misunderstanding of Jesus. The list of mistaken parties is long.

Herod the Great mistook Jesus for a political revolutionary.

The religious leaders mistook Jesus for another false Messiah.

Jesus’ family mistook him for a person who was “out of his mind.”

Nicodemus mistook Jesus for a wise teacher.

The rich young ruler mistook Jesus for a dispenser of tickets to heaven.

The woman at the well mistook Jesus for a Jewish partisan.

Herod Antipas mistook Jesus for John the Baptist back from the grave.

The people said that Jesus was a political messiah, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

The disciples….oh my. The disciples were certain Jesus was a political messiah/king who would bring the Kingdom through miracles, but just at the moment they were most certain of who and what Jesus was, he turned everything upside down. Only after the horror of the cross was past and the Spirit opened their minds and hearts to the truth did the disciples begin to see Jesus clearly.

Thomas mistook Jesus for a dead man.

Like the blind man in Mark 8, the disciples had partial, unclear sight that required a second touch for clarity.

I believe Judas misjudged Jesus. Saul the persecutor certainly did, as did Pilate and the Romans.

If you got all the people who misjudged Jesus into a room, you’d need a bigger room.

When our children were small, my son was a big fan of wrestling. Every wrestler has a “signature move” to end a match; a move that no one does exactly like they do.

When I read Mark 11 and the story of Jesus turning over the tables of the merchants and moneychangers, I believe Jesus’ “signature move” is turning over the tables of expectations about who he is and what it means to follow him.

Read back through the Biblical examples I’ve cited. In almost every instance, it’s Jesus who overturns the tables of expectations and preconceived notions. It’s not just a discovery by a seeker. Jesus is the initiator of the big surprises. Part of what it means to be a Jesus-follower is to have your notions of religion, life and God turned upside down by the rabbi from Nazareth.

So is Jesus like today’s Christians who so easily assume they now what Jesus is all about? I’d like to suggest that the answer is “No.” Jesus isn’t like today’s Christians at all, and a large portion of our failure of Christlikeness comes down to a failure to know what Jesus was like.

Do you like grape Kool-Aid? I’ve always loved the taste of grape Kool-Aid on a hot day.

Have you ever tasted grapes? Do grapes taste grape Kool-Aid?

No, they don’t. But you could easily imagine a child who loves grape Kool-Aid eating a grape and saying “Yuck!! This doesn’t taste like grapes at all!”

The real thing has been replaced by the advertised replacement so long that there’s genuine confusion and disappointment at the taste of a real grape.

So it is with Jesus. The version of Jesus that dominates so much contemporary Christianity is the grape Kool-Aid version of a real grape. And many, many Christians have no “taste” for Jesus as we find him in scripture, especially the Gospels.

Where would the real Jesus perform his “signature” move of turning over our popular misconception of him?

Here’s just a few tentative and preliminary suggestions.

Jesus wasn’t building an institution or an organization, but an efficient, flexible movement with the Gospel at the center and grace as the fuel.

The church Jesus left in history was a “band of brothers (and sisters)” than an organization of programs and buildings.

The message at the heart of all Jesus said and did was the Kingdom of God, which implicitly included himself as King and the status of all the world as rebels in need of forgiveness and surrender.

The movement Jesus’ left behind was made up of the last, the lost, the least, the losers and the recently dead. The world would never recognize this Jesus shaped collection of nobodies as successful.

Jesus treated women, sexual sinners and notoriously scandalous sinners with inexplicable acceptance.

Jesus taught the message, power and presence of the Kingdom. He did not teach how to be rich, how to improve yourself, how to be a good person or how to be successful.

Jesus didn’t teach principles. He taught the presence of a whole new world where God reigns and all things are made right.

Jesus rejected the claims of organized religion to have an exclusive franchise on God, and embodied the proof that God was in the world by his Son and through his Spirit to whomever has faith in Jesus.

Jesus practiced radical acceptance in a way that was dangerous, upsetting and world-changing.

Jesus calls all persons to follow him as disciples in the Kingdom of God. This invitation doesn’t look identical to the experiences of the apostles, but the claims and commands of Jesus to his apostles extend to all Jesus-followers anywhere.

God is revealed in Jesus in a unique way. What God has to show us and to say to us is there in Jesus of Nazareth. All the fullness of God lives in him, and to be united to Jesus by faith is to have the fullness of all God’s promises and blessings.

Jesus didn’t talk much about how to get to heaven, and certainly never gave a “gospel presentation” like today’s evangelicals. Nor did he teach that any organization of earth controlled who goes to heaven.

Jesus never fought the culture war.

Jesus was political because the Kingdom of God is here now, but he was the opposite of the political mindset of his time as expressed in various parties and sects.

Jesus was radically simple in his spirituality.

Jesus was radically simple in his worship.

Jesus wasn’t an advocate of family values as much as he was a cause of family division.

Jesus fulfills the old testament scriptures completely, and they can not be rightly understood without him as their ultimate focus.

The only people Jesus was ever angry at was the clergy. He called out clergy corruption and demanded honesty and integrity from those who claimed to speak for God and lead his people.

Jesus embraced slavery and servanthood as the primary identifiers of the leaders of his movement.

Jesus didn’t waste his time with religious and doctrinal debates. He always move to the heart of the matter. Love God, Love Neighbor, Live the Kingdom.

Jesus expected his disciples to get it, and was frustrated when they didn’t.

Jesus died for being a true revolutionary, proclaiming a Kingdom whose foundations are the City of God.

Does this sound like Jesus as you’ve encountered him in evangelicalism?

That’s the sound of tables turning over.

That’s the taste of a real grape, not the Kool-Aid.

That’s why so many Christians aren’t like Jesus.

They have no idea what he was really all about.

IM readers deserve to know what’s been going on in much of my blogging and commenting the last year +.

For those of you who prefer that I just be a nut job, don’t despair. There’s still plenty of time for you to be proven right.

But for those of you who have been reading between the lines, evangelizing me, praying for me or just confused, this should clear a few things up.

Read: Almost The Whole Story: What’s Happened In Our Family Since Holy Week 07 And Why I’ve Been A Nut Case Ever Since.

At the school where I work, we have two weekend worship gatherings. These used to be led by a local church, and so we called them “church.” We have daily “chapel” in the same worship space.

These two worship gatherings need a cool, hip, emerging name. Like “Element.”

Gathering #1 is 9:15 a.m. Traditional worship with very light liturgy. Structured, and the kids are usually pretty quiet. 2-3 familiar songs alternating piano and guitar every other week. Will have some creative ministries stuff next year. Have a preaching team of 4 men, followed by small groups. We do basic topical/catechetical teaching. Cover Ten Commandments, Apostle’s Creed, Lord’s Prayer, various short Biblical series.

Gathering #2 is 7:00 p.m. Contemporary band that really kicks. Two of us preaching evangelisitically and in rotation. Very informal and active service. Kids love it.

We are a boarding school for grades 6-12. The gatherings are for the students, but some adults and visitors do attend.

OK. I need some name suggestions. Help me out. I’m thinking logos and t-shirts here.

By the way…”Law” and “Gospel” won’t be considered.

(ESV) Philippians 3:7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…

(The Message) Philippians 3: 8 Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ 9 and be embraced by him.

Christians are supposed to be like Jesus. They’re not.

Everyone knows Christians are supposed to be like Jesus. Not “like Jesus enough to be saved without him,” but “like Jesus because you’re following Jesus.” Of course, everyone also knows the vast majority of Christians aren’t like Jesus, or even making any real efforts in that direction.

Christians are conservatives and liberals.

Christians are culture warriors and advocates of family values.

Christians are excited about the megachurches and busy consuming Christian products, from t-shirts to music to cruises.

Christians are defenders of denominations and watchdogs for doctrinal orthodoxy.

Christians are having their best life now and becoming a better you.

Christians are purpose driven and super spiritual.

Christians are taking back what the devil stole and taking a stand in a godless culture.

Christians have dozens of labels and participate in hundreds of activities.

Christians have their own celebrities, their own cable channels, their own entertainment and their own comfortable subcultures.

But few Christians are like Jesus, especially here in the prosperous Christian west.

By any measure you want to use, most Christians don’t resemble Jesus in action, attitude, character, thinking, motivation or sacrifice. Christians don’t live like Jesus, relate to other people like Jesus, deal with money life Jesus or have the spiritual practices of Jesus. Jesus and those who claim his name are often so far apart that a kind of sleight of hand has to be performed to distract the world into looking away from the obvious.

Most Christians today aren’t like Jesus, and apparently it doesn’t seem to be a very big deal to many Christians themselves.

If you ask non-Christians about this discrepancy, you’ll discover one of the supreme ironies of the age. Unbelievers are far more aware of the normal connection between Christian faith and Christian behavior than many Christians.

Atheists, Muslims and various kinds of unbelievers are well aware that to be a Christian should mean to be like Christ, and they are very aware most of the Christians they know are very unlike Christ, with little concern about the discrepancy. Often, these non-Christians have a more honest and accurate view of the connection between Christ and Christians than Christians themselves.

Because I teach and minister to many of those atheists and non-Christians, I should have known this long ago, but it took years for the truth to force its way into my stubborn consciousness.

My default position, like most Christians, was an assumption that Christians knew their own failures, but unbelievers would never notice the things we said, did and failed to do.

We could notice our greed, shallowness, cultural bias, arrogance and lack of compassion, but unbelievers would only see our good works and sincerity. We would be aware of our failures, but unbelievers would always see our good side.

Then one day, one of my Muslim students wrote me a letter assessing her experience with Christians. It was eloquent and thoughtful, and it was brutally honest: Most Christians weren’t like Jesus, and the Christian insistence that God was working in and through them was largely undercut by the failure of individual Christians to show character that surpassed what was seen in Muslims or Buddhists.

I’ve had similar letters and conversations in the 30 years I’ve worked with students. Like many ministers, I had trained myself in making a response to this kind of observation. My counter-case went something like this:

Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven. The Good News of Jesus is about God’s gracious forgiveness of the undeserving. Christians aren’t necessarily better people on the moral scale. They have a different kind of righteousness; the righteousness that is a gift from God.

What about becoming like Christ? Well, that’s a process that happens through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is a work in the heart. You really have no idea how far someone’s come in their resemblance to Jesus Christ just be looking at their outward behavior.

So when a Muslim says Christians aren’t Christlike, they are demonstrating their inability to understand the Gospel. And when an atheist says Christians are hypocritical, they are showing their own hypocrisy, since they have no foundation at all for their own morality.

Now, this isn’t a ridiculous set of answers at all. Much of what I said is true and useful in the right setting.

The problem, however, is simple: There’s no answer, explanation or apologetic that can possibly sever the connection between the person of Jesus and the lives of those who claim he is their Lord, God and example. It doesn’t make sense to assume that Christ followers aren’t growing in similarity to Jesus.

Jesus-following people should be Jesus shaped people.

Every so often, I’ll meet a student who has a United States Marine Corps tattoo they’ve acquired in their teenage enthusiasm for the United States Marines. If that student makes it to Marine boot camp, they may be surprised at the reaction of their drill instructor to that tattoo.

He or she won’t be impressed with their admiration and enthusiasm for the corps. Wearing the Marine symbol is a privilege that belongs only to those who have been through the process, trials and tests of Marine training.

You can be a fan of the Marine corps, but don’t say or imply you are one- or deserve to be one- until you’ve been “shaped” by the pain, values and loyalty of the Marine experience.

Jesus seems to have a lot of fans these days. But being a fan, and being a Jesus shaped follower of Christ are two entirely different realities.

Jesus’ fans live a kind of external Christianity that majors on personal satisfaction, entertainment, big crowds, cultural influence and consumption of Christian products.

Jesus’ followers are living in a process of being shaped by the person of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. The goal at every stage is conformity to Jesus himself. Conforming us to the image of Jesus is God’s goal for his entire work in our lives. The methods, practices and resources of Christian spirituality are all Jesus-centered. The result of the process is a person who is a recognizable, credible disciple of his/her master, Jesus of Nazareth.

Like real Marines, Jesus shaped disciples have no excuses for what it means to follow Jesus. They don’t specialize in proclaiming themselves as something they are not. Instead, they are students of Jesus and demonstrations of the resurrected power of the Jesus we meet in the pages of scripture.

While they deeply feel the distance between Jesus and their own version of discipleship, the observing world notices, instead, the increasing similarity between these Christ followers and the Christ they follow.

Are Christians like Jesus? Enough like Jesus that a Muslim or atheist wouldn’t have to remind us of the relevance of the question?

Here in Kentucky, we sometimes say that someone has gotten “the cart before the horse.” We mean that someone has gotten things out of order, especially in the area of what should naturally have the power to lead and what should naturally follow.

Carts don’t lead. They have no power to do so. Horses can follow, but when hitched to a cart, they are meant to lead the way.

Much of modern Christianity has put the cart before the horse. We’ve put a version of Christianity that has no power out in front of the one who is the only power Christianity has.

Our Christian “cart” is elaborate and crowded. Our “horse” isn’t very impressive by the world’s standards. But without Jesus out front and leading a movement that resembles what we read in the Gospels, we risk creating something that is no more than our own collection of ideas, preferences and entertainments.

And then bringing Jesus along to bless that mess.

In Philippians 3, Paul spoke passionately about the life-transforming power of “knowing” Jesus Christ. While we don’t know if Paul ever encountered Jesus in his earthly life, he was acquainted with the Christian movement in the sufferings he caused in the years he persecuted the church.

He watched women and children hauled off to prison. He watched men die by stoning. He watched the homes of Christians be broken into and ransacked. He watched the leaders of the Christian community suffer persecution, imprisonment and death.

He watched Stephen die with the enemy-forgiveness of Jesus on his lips.

When Paul encountered the Christian community as a persecutor, he met people suffering, sacrificing and dying like Jesus. When Jesus spoke to him on the road to Damascus, he said that Saul/Paul been persecuting him. Jesus himself.

Paull would later say that Christian suffering was making up what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ, a statement that radically identifies Jesus with those who follow him.

Many Christians have invented a kind of Christianity where “knowing Christ” and being “Jesus shaped” are two completely separate realities.

If you are surprised that most unbelievers and fringe-believing observers of our version of Christianity don’t want to be like us, you should consider this:

We’re not like Jesus.

And we think that’s normal.

In his ministry, Jesus often had to listen to the Pharisees tout their relation to God based on a collection of externals. Jesus told them pointedly that God could raise up their version of being God’s people from the rocks on the side of the road.

Throughout his criticisms of the Pharisees in Matthew 23, Jesus points out what the Pharisees would never admit: they talked up one thing, and lived another. They proclaimed themselves true sons of Abraham; Jesus called them whitewashed tombs and hypocrites.

Jesus didn’t want this problem to be replicated in his disciples. He plainly taught them to abide in him, and as they did, they would bear much genuine fruit.

If Christians are supposed to be Jesus shaped as disciples, then we should take an extended look at Jesus himself, and how he differs from so many of us.

Boar’s Head Tavern fellow “Fr. Spike” solves those stressful denominational worries.

“I think I’m giving up on finding that one perfect place that will be able to satisfy my superior tastes in churches, so I plan to use my contrariness to establish a stable cycle, which is pretty much the next best thing.

First, I will attend the early service at my local evangelical megachurch, New Life Excitement Amazing Church Franchise #165. About half an hour into worship (maybe 1/4 of a worship chorus), I will inevitably convert to Catholicism. I will hurry over to mass at Our Lady of Dubious Likenesses in Quesadillas, but find myself so irritated by the idea of the actual mass that I will indignantly march over to Biblical Family Principles Baptist Family Family Church. With any luck, they will be well into the sermon. Since this is an election year, I’ll only have to listen for a few minutes before the blatant politicization and unbearable law sends me over to St. Oprah’s Episcopal. I’ll enjoy the sonorous liturgy right up until the sermon, which will help me finally understand that there is no God and all religion is evil. I’ll head out to my car, where I’ll do devotions with Richard Dawkins. It usually takes around 17 or 18 pages before, out of spite, I go to a mosque, or more likely Extremely Greek Orthodox church, which is just down the road. I know I won’t be able to take communion, of course, but I’ll be able to get the priest’s blessing and tell everyone about my coming home story. The self-congratulation will be enough to propel me happily back to NLEAC #165 where I’ll be able to catch maybe the last 15 minutes of the closing song, having made peace with evangelicalism until next Sunday.

The only flaw I can see is that I’ll never get to take communion, but if my wife and I order rolls and a glass of merlot at lunch, we can decide that’s what Jesus really had in mind and be emerging for a few minutes. Problem solved!”

From The Gathering at OBI, May 4, 2008. (An audience of high schoolers from all over the world, many not Christians.)