Not The Battle You Think: Jesus As Nothing New and Paula White’s Atrocious Theology

It’s not that a battle between Good and Evil is not real and significant and needs to be engaged. It’s simply that it cannot and should not be construed as God Vs. Evil. Calling this battle a war of God Vs. The Devil, Evil personified, or any characterization of Disease, Disaster and Devolvement is a construct of human thought, mind spin, that we, humanity, have built in order to insulate and protect ourselves against nihilism and hopelessness (as well as an excuse to not volunteer to fight evil and thus be injured or killed).

 And so, too, many can say that God too is a human construct. I have to be honest and say that there are reasons to agree. But I don’t agree. Something else is going on.

What if something else is at play here? What if the entrance, not to say intrusion, upon history that is Jesus of Nazareth (And, yes, he did walk those hills of Palestine. Historical fact.) is not something or someone new or novel but is the Thing and One that has existed from the beginning of time and space and is the world’s creative and redemptive operating system (Grace) that got everything going in the first place and then burst out again on the scene in the time and space we now call The First Century of the Common Era and in Palestine in order to call us to attention and give us again what has always been ours: identity, community, meaning, destiny as Forever Gifts from Someone or Something that is simply too good not to be true? (I am out of breath! It takes a Run-On Sentence like that to try to capture all this!).

What if?

 What if the non-violence of Jesus that engaged the violence of Caesar was not a Resistance to the World Order but rather the Emergence of Distributive Justice (that is, Righteousness) that is the World Order and the World Order that has been with us from the Beginning that even Religion, Culture, Politics and Evolution cannot destroy? What if Jesus is so Old that he is nothing New?

[The Church worked hard to describe all this in the Councils of the 4th and 5th Centuries (Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon: it was the first, Nicaea, that produced the Nicene Creed that was comprehensive enough, albeit not as compact as the Apostles Creed, to hold enough water to make it still into 21st century liturgies). Nicaea and it’s Nicene Creed is trying to say that the 1st Century Jesus was from the Beginning before any century and will be and already is the End of all centuries. See how we have to use poetry to get at all this?]

There are two wars going on.

One, Bad People Against Good People. Evil vs. Good. This war can be won by us. We have choices. We are in it. Please: Engage! Just don’t drag God into this! If and when you do you end up with the atrocious and sickening exploitation and manipulation of people in the name of God that is the likes of Pastor Paula White selling “blessing(s)” (see the News this past week)!

Ok, I’d like to say and think leaders like White are harmless because they can be easily sidelined by exposing their blatant transactional theology. But no, not harmless. White not only is personally in the White House (White House Faith Office established in February, and, I assume being supported by our tax dollars) and holding the President’s ear, but this “blessing theology” is the kind of thing that drives democracies into theocracies and motivates and sanctions actions against others deemed not just against us but against God and therefore deserving eradication! Again, atrocious!

 Two, God Against God. God vs. God. This can’t be engaged by us, let alone won by us. Notice we aren’t even mentioned. Only God is involved. The God who brings Darkness fights the God who Brings Light. Who wins? Spoiler Alert: Light. Light. Light!

Why is this war between God and God being fought? I don’t know.

How is it possible that Light wins? I don’t know.

I only know that this Light and this Victory is, as I intimated above but now say assuredly, too good not to be true.