The other day I saw a bumper sticker: “Try Jesus.” Try Jesus? Whoever wrote and printed that soooo doesn’t get it. They don’t get Jesus, they don’t get the Christian life, they don’t get the relational aspect of biblical Christianity, they don’t understand the Cross.
Try Jesus? We might as well print bumper stickers for plants that say “Try Light.” Or for appliances: “Try Electricity.” Or for pens: “Try Ink.”
Try Jesus. The mentality of this thought permeates our culture, and even worse, it permeates many churches: Jesus as God’s best self-help tool. Jesus as an addition to our lives, like vitamins or exercise.
The other day I was having a texting conversation with a young lady when I had reason to suggest that she was a functional atheist: claiming to love God but living and thinking in ways that are no different from an atheist. She said, “Sue, how can you say that? I have God in my life!”
I responded, “YOU have God in YOUR life. . . can you see how backwards that is?” God as an additive completely misses the point of why He made us, why He calls us to be reconciled to Himself. Not so we can “have us some God in our lives,” as they say in the South, but so that we can join the love-fest of Father, Son and Spirit in an ongoing dance of friendship, fellowship and celebration.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Trinity and how the Three-Personed God wants us to join in on Their party. It has impacted my prayer life: now, when I pray for someone, I envision her in the middle of a divine group hug, surrounded by Father, Son and Spirit loving each other with the person caught up in the middle, getting “loved on” on all sides.
It’s so much bigger, so much better than the puny “Try Jesus.”
This blog post originally appeared at blogs.bible.org/engage/sue_bohlin/try_jesus
on Dec. 8, 2009.