Jesus Is Not My Role Model
- Rev. Sam Downing
- Mar 25, 2007
Long before Lance Armstrong's yellow LiveStrong bracelets were the fashion rave, some clever entrepreneur pimped a line from Charles Sheldon's novel "In His Steps" and gave us the famous WWJD bracelets (What Would Jesus Do?) At first blush this seems a noble sentiment, and as a minister I generally approve when people want to emulate Jesus' behavior. Frequently I talk to folk who want precious little to do with "organized religion" but nonetheless think Jesus was a pretty cool guy and might even make a role model. These people like to think of themselves as spiritual rather than religious, because being "spiritual" doesn't tie you down; it allows you to take the best of all religions and use many faith traditions to become a better, kinder and more...pious individual.
Although I am conversant with other faith streams, the only one I really know a great deal about is Christianity. And to people who are trying to use Jesus as their role model, my response is: Are you nuts?! Have you really thought about what that means? You would do better to lower your sights and pick something easier. There is a famous account in the Gospel of Luke where an expert in the rabbinic law stood up to test Jesus. He asked him, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" (A question perhaps on the minds of many of us.) What the law expert probably expected to hear from Jesus was some sort of heretical dismissal of tradition and a pithy reply of "Just believe in me." Instead, Jesus returned the question: "What is written in the Law?" ("Law" by the way, refers to the Ten Commandments and other moral teachings.)
Doubtless enamored with his own piety and learning, the law expert responded with a fastball right down the middle: a very excellent and theologically correct summary. "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your mind' and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Jesus hit that fastball into the upper deck when he replied, "Do this and you will live." Oh, is that all? Only love God perfectly and while I'm at it everyone else too? I can't even love God with all my strength and mind for one day, much less the rest of my life. Do you think you do? Test yourself: When you close your eyes and your mind wanders, what do you think about? A guilty pleasure? A career advancement? A fulfilling relationship? A recreational pursuit? Or are you thinking about how your various goals and desires help you to love and honor God? (If you answered ‘yes' to the above then please come over and resurrect my son's hamster which died two days ago.)
OK, maybe that's not fair. Then take the second command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Haven't you often heard people say "I just try to live by the ‘Golden Rule'? How many of us are really investing as much time and energy (and money) in the welfare of others as we do for ourselves? How many of us are just as excited about the promotion our co-worker received that we were passed over for? That our friend has found the person of their dreams while we remain single and lonely? Jut tickled pink for the woman expecting her third child and we can't conceive? Delighted that our neighbor's kid got a full ride scholarship when ours did not?
You see, if you're going to adopt Jesus as your role model are you really prepared to be judged by how well you keep the above two commands? The reality is, we either have to admit that our WWJD bracelets are a noble yet futile sentiment, or else lower our standards so we can meet them (which is easy to do if you're merely "spiritual" since you get to set your own standards anyway.) How glibly we often remark "I'm just doing the best I can" as if somehow God is leveraged into accepting our (frequently) half-ass efforts to play nice. It's a good thing though that other people are not allowed to do that. I don't want to find out that my surgeon flunked out of medical school, or my lawyer trained himself by watching Perry Mason re-runs, or the pilot on my flight had only flown a glider once or twice before today. We would never accept lowered expectations for things like that, but when it comes to our spirituality...?
But this of course begs the question: If Jesus is not my role model then what good is he? Why build a religion around him? The answer quite simply is that Jesus never came to be a role model. He came to be a Savior. Contrary to popular opinion (and cheesy televangelists) the authentic follower of Jesus is not someone who has sucked it up enough to keep the rules but rather someone who trusts in the spirituality of Jesus in place of their own. I often fail miserably to love either God or my neighbor, but the one thing that keeps me from giving up on that noble endeavor is the fact that at the end of the day I know Jesus loves me, and sacrificed himself for me. And because he loves someone as unlovable as me, I am energized to attempt to love God and others, neither lowering the standards to suit my convenience nor despairing over my failures. I don't need a role model, I need a Savior.
I heard someone once describe it like this: On a scale of 1 to 10, with God being a ‘10' and an ax murderer being a ‘1' where do you rate? Whatever your number it will certainly be less than ‘10'. And that is where Jesus comes in. He did not leave us a corpus of self-help instructions to improve our score; he came to make up the difference. The good news is that: my failure to consistently love God and my neighbor does not undo me: I am judged by Jesus' obedience on my behalf. The bad news is: I no longer have an excuse to lower the standards to accommodate an easy "spirituality." I have to get off my pious butt and begin to seriously wrestle with "What would Jesus do?"
Rev. Sam Downing is Senior Pastor of City Presbyterian Church in Denver, Colorado. You can learn more about City Pres and read more from Rev. Downing at www.citypres.org.
