I'm terrified that if my eyes are opened to see everything in the light of truth, I will also see that the way I see the Jesus, whom I claim as Lord, is but a dim reflection of reality.
| posted 3/13/2012
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Because I think we all have a similar, yet unspoken fear. And we need to get it out and talk about it. Christians don't have to hide and pretend there is no disconnect between our experience and what we see written in the pages of the Bible. We read stories of miracles, see a man who commanded waves and wind (and they obeyed!), took authority over demonic spirits, spoke breath into the dead, and we wonder, Do I really know Jesus?
If I have to be transparent, I'll admit that I'm terrified that if my eyes are opened someday to see everything in the light of truth, I will also see that the way I see the Jesus whom I claim as Lord is but a dim reflection of reality.
This fear is what drives me onward. I want to know him.
I'm afraid that I can never do justice in describing or explaining the majesty, power, and perfection of Jesus. That's the nature of human discussions, I suppose. No matter how high above my own experience I reach, I'll never be able to adequately pen the qualities of a perfect God. And so even my attempts to expose how I have domesticated Jesus will do just that: I'm bound to domesticate him further—to wrap him within pages of description implies that he is small enough to describe. To have humans speak of him, to write of him, implies that we can in some way wrap the human mind around him.
Of course, that's impossible.
And that is, in part, my point. It's what I want to challenge myself to see, and you to hear. I want to raise my own awareness of my sinful tendency to make the big small and the small big.
This is the essence of my working definition. I am domesticating Christ anytime my behavior reflects my belief in a saving Christ who is too small to handle my day-to-day problems of worry or anxiety. I am domesticating him anytime I wallow in guilt because, in essence, the power of the Cross has been diminished in my thoughts. It has become insufficient to soothe my conscience.
Domesticating Jesus is so much more than just not recognizing his infinite power and falling on our faces in awe. He obviously doesn't reveal himself in his glory, at least not in his full glory, or I promise I'd never get out of a facedown posture (of course, I wouldn't survive a millisecond of his revealed glory, so even that statement is ludicrous). But I domesticate him every day in so many ways, in little things like doubt, anxiety, or fear about the future.
Not one of us on this side of heaven will ever really understand Christ in all his glory. But every one of us can make an effort to remove a few of the filters that have dimmed the true light and replaced it with something else altogether.
So pull up a chair, fellow traveler. Let's sit together to reason about a horrible thing that I've done.
I've domesticated the Lord of the universe.
Adapted from Domesticated Jesus by Harry L. Kraus Jr. ISBN 978-1-59638-185-8, pages 7-15, used by permission from P&R Publishing Co. P.O. Box 817, Phillipsburg, N.J. 08865 www.prpbooks.com
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