The All-Singing, All-Dancing Passion of the Christ - Part 1

I had a lot of bad theology as a kid.

I was in church every Sunday. During Sunday School lessons, I sat cross-legged on my little rug-square. I listened intently and answered all the questions correctly and quoted versus in the NIV. I sang Father Abraham with all its hand motions and endless reprises. And all the while I imagined Jesus just like a walking Pez dispenser.

I told you I was a little heretic.

No one ever taught me that Jesus was the plastic purveyor of an Austrian pellet candy. Not exactly. But spring-loaded and smiling, ready to reward complete strangers with his sweet and tart nuggets of advice, that's just how I pictured him. I just couldn't figure out why everyone back then didn't absolutely love him for it, too.

On the other hand, during "big church" sermons Jesus could have been a dried out and cracked old commencement speaker. (I would realize this years later when I was about to graduate from college.) He was 33, but I pictured him much older. Sour. Semi-famous. And, translated into the stilted cadence of our pastor who mostly read passages out of the KJV, inexcusably overeducated. In the sermons I heard, it was like Jesus kept returning to the crowds with his vague, gauzy speeches of empowerment and resolution, but -- poor, frustrated old soul! -- his own disciples foundered and failed to graduate.

Occasionally, when we had guest preachers, I got the impression that Jesus was like the David Copperfield of the first century. Like the time he healed a guy's eyes -- twice! Why did he do it twice? In my young, television-irradiated mind, it was his obvious instinct for showmanship.

I had a lot of bad theology. And it sounds strange to say it, but I think that I gathered most of it from the sermons that I heard.

To be continued...

By: Chad