In those chapters he reveals the limits of his own Christology while correcting ours.Ī favorite habit of liberal Christianity is to turn the living, lordly, resurrected Jesus into some abstracted essence or a set of propositions. But Darling tends to get tangled up in his own Jesus myths when he goes after more subtle heresies like American Jesus or Post-Church Jesus. But should he be so certain? It’s easy enough to knock down Joel Osteen’s Prosperity Jesus, or the goofy, hairy-chested Braveheart Jesus.
Perhaps more insidiously, the critic presumes to have captured the more correct, biblically defensible, surefire original Jesus. The challenge is not only that lousy Christology is rampant among us. How dare you?” To which I hear Darling reply, “Gotcha!”Īnyone setting out to correct our false, self-serving conceptions of Christ has got his work cut out. I’ve been personally blessed by that Jesus. At various points I reacted with, “Hey, I really like worshiping that Jesus. Church study groups, if they dared, would find the short, fast-paced, hard-hitting chapters great catalysts for debate. This book makes helpful reading for anyone willing to have his or her understanding of Christ critiqued and corrected. Clear biblical thinking casts down our self-fabricated godlets. The Genevan Reformer said that idolatry is our root sin and that the human imagination is an idol factory. In his usually gentle, sometimes funny, always astute skewering of trendy myths about our Lord, Darling (vice president of communications for the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission) vindicates a key insight of one of his theological heroes, John Calvin. No matter how confidently you proclaim fidelity to biblical teaching, this book will snag you with at least one of its pseudo-Christs. Phil Jesus,” “Prosperity Jesus,” and more. In The Original Jesus: Trading the Myths We Create for the Savior Who Is (Baker), Daniel Darling takes aim at a score of popular but fake saviors: “Guru Jesus,” “Red-Letter Jesus,” “Braveheart Jesus,” “Dr. Today we continue to downgrade the original Jesus into someone less threatening and demanding.
At first we dressed him in a royal robe and placed a crown upon his head-before nailing him to a cross. How ironic that Jesus, who came to transform us, has so many followers intent on remaking him into a more congenial idol. You know the old saw: God created humans in his own image, and we have spent ages returning the favor.
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