The sheer volume alone of books produced by the Christian publishing industry ensures the occasion for controversy as the reading public attempts to digest the continuous deluge of text. The book titled
Speaking of Jesus, authored by Carl Medearis, is no exception.
The book has attracted enthusiastic praise and harsh condemnations; this is the case for most such books. But Speaking of Jesus has had more sales, and more attention, than most titles in the spiritual publishing industry.
Medearis himself is a bit of a shadowy figure: the usual biographical information (where he was born, where he studied, etc.) doesn’t easily pop up on an internet search.
One of the main points that he makes in the book is that many Christians aren’t aware that words like ‘Christian’ and ‘church’ have gained toxic connotations among many non-Christians.
For the average Christian, these words evoke peace, charity, friendship, altruism, humane charitable efforts, conflict resolution, tolerance, understanding, and a rich cultural heritage. For many who do not consider themselves Christians, these words can evoke the very opposite.
So when the well-meaning Christian wants to explain the benefits of ‘Christianity’ to his worldly neighbor, the message has been set up for failure, for misunderstanding, from the beginning. The same is true for the word ‘church.’
One can take the tactic of trying to patiently explain that all the negative connotations which have adhered to these words are really misplaced: that atrocities which might have been committed in the name of Christianity were actually the precise type of thing against which true Christianity stands.
But that tactic, while logically and intellectually sound, simply doesn’t get much traction with the ordinary person. Eyes glaze over when someone tries to explain the difference between “real Christians” and “those who simply call themselves Christians but are really doing the exact opposite of what a Christian would do.”
If the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ are tough sells, the word ‘church’ is even tougher. Even Christians don’t want to sit through a detailed explanation of how the church is an organization which is supposed to be devoted to the teachings of Jesus, but because it’s made up of ordinary imperfect human beings, it sometimes does the opposite of what Jesus would do.
In some cultures, and in some parts of the world, if you use the words ‘Christian’ or ‘church,’ you’ve simply lost your listeners from that point forward.
What Medearis suggests, reasonably, is that we stop using those words, at least when we’re talking to those who haven’t publicly declared themselves to be Christians. Hence the book’s title: instead of talking about church and about Christianity, we avoid those loaded words, and talk instead about Jesus.
Both prima facie and after consideration, his suggest has merit. That is, after all, what Jesus and His followers in the New Testament generally did. The word ‘Christian’ is rare in the New Testament, and ‘church’ is used as a term with insiders, but not with the general public.
If this is largely what his book denotes, then why the controversy? He’s simply presented a suggestion about how we talk to nonbelievers, and a reasonable suggestion at that. What’s the problem?
First, it’s worth noting that there’s always someone who’s willing to disagree with a new book. So a few of the detractors are there simply for form’s sake, offering resistance purely on principle.
Beyond that, however, are those who find fault with the book for more substantive reasons. One of those reasons may be that Medearis sometimes uses unfortunate verbal formulations, in part perhaps because he’s trying to writing in an approachable casual style, in part perhaps because he sometimes takes a bit too much pleasure in playing the provocateur.
On the other hand, some of those who evaluate the book may be guilty of sloppy reading. They see things in the book: things which simply aren’t there.
So Medearis may have done some sloppy writing, and his critics may have done some sloppy reading.
Early in the book, Medearis writes that
I’ve never seen a religion save anyone. All religions are great at laying out some basic rules - dos and don’ts - that are good for our lives, but they don’t really provide hope or any kind of eternal security. It seems religions end up causing more trouble than solving anything.
Some pious readers are troubled to see Medearis speaking dismissively of religion. Yet this is a rather traditional and orthodox view within Christianity: religion is a man-made system of ideas and traditions and institutions, and Christians endure religion but hope to get past it. They hope to get to a relationship with the one true real living God. “Relationship, not religion” is even a theological slogan in some circles.
Jesus is the incarnation of this one true real living God; He lived a human life on earth, while being fully divine, preached His good news, was killed, and came back to life again three days later. That’s not religion: that’s an account of events.
Jesus loves people, cares for and about people, and offers His saving grace freely to all people. That’s not religion: that’s how Jesus relates to us.
So, with the understanding outlined above, it’s OK for Medearis to jettison religion. In fact, it places him in the mainstream of Christian thought. The events surrounding the life of Jesus and they way in which He is interacting with people today are more important than cultural traditions and institutions which are the essence of religion.
Medearis also writes:
I’m not sure how the religion I grew up in would or should deal with terrorism. But I do have some thoughts how Jesus might deal with terrorists because He had two with Him in His inner circle of friends. A Zealot and tax collector. A political insurgent and an economic terrorizer of common folk.
Now, naturally, Medearis will be able to claim that he’s factually correct in his description of Simon and Matthew. But he may be a bit too cute. Yes, we can ponder the social impact of Zealots and tax collectors during the first century in the regions surrounding Jerusalem and the Jordan River valley; and, yes, there may be ways in which they are vaguely analogous to modern, twenty-first century terrorists.
But Medearis is failing to respect the task of an author, which is to know his audience and address it effectively. He succeeds simply in repelling many of his readers.
The fix wouldn’t have been difficult. Medearis could have written something like, “As much as we love and revere folks like Simon and Matthew, it’s possible that they seemed much less lovable to their first-century contemporaries; in some ways, they were like outlaws or terrorists … ”
Instead of bluntly and flatly equating Christ’s disciples with terrorists, Medearis could have worked his way up to the simile in a way which would have been less off-putting to his readers.
In a longer passage, Medearis writes:
In my experience, sharing Jesus is not all that difficult, even in a hostile environment. I don’t tell people that they’re sinning and that they’re going to go to hell unless they believe what I believe. I just talk about Jesus. If, on the other hand, we believe that the gospel is a systematic explanation of Christianity, we have to own up to all the faults and failures of Christian history, while convincing people that Christianity really is better than whatever they believe.
Here’s a few of the scenarios that “Christianity” brings to mind. The Irish Rebellion. The Protestants versus the Catholics. The religious genocides in Africa and the Balkans. What about the persecution of scientists like Copernicus and Galileo? What about the Inquisition? What about the Holocaust, slavery, and the modern white supremacy movement?
If you want to test this, simply ask natives of any continent what they think of when you say the word Christian. They could say anything. Crusader. Slave master. Warrior. They’ll point to Cortez, de Gama, the armies of Constantine, and many others who came to the native lands, stole, ravaged, killed, and spread disease. All of these “Christians” came to ripe and plentiful lands and yanked the rug out from the indigenous people while forcing the “pagans” to convert, often at the tip of the sword or the muzzle of a musket.
Again, Medearis seems to delight in dumping ice water on pious readers. And again, yes, he’s got some relevant and important facts on his side, although this time, he’s gotten a bit sloppier with history, and few small corrections need to be made.
There are times and places at which it is appropriate to prod readers who may be a bit too comfortable. But some authors are tempted to play the provocateur for the mere sake of shocking or annoying, and Medearis verges on this vice here.
He properly raises of the matter of what “we believe that the gospel is.” So what is the gospel? He answers a few pages later that
The gospel is not a what. It is not a how. The gospel is a Who. The gospel is literally the good news of Jesus. Jesus is the gospel.
While he is correct, Medearis must then be patient with the reader who has not yet internalized that Jesus is not Christianity. Medearis does not help his own cause by presenting his points in reverse order. He could have first informed the reader that Jesus is the gospel, which would then allow the reader to embrace the notion that the gospel is not an “explanation of Christianity.”
Medearis also does not succeed in casting much of this as a global misunderstanding: his prose fails him. Certainly, there are many people for whom ‘Christian’ or ‘Christianity’ does in fact elicit these negative associations; and these people are not unreasonable in making such associations. But they are also not correct.
This is a world-historical tragedy: how something which is unambiguously good came to be associated with so much evil.
On a ‘micro’ level, there are many minutiae, and much needle-threading, to be done with the historical data: there were faithful missionaries in South America and Central America who pled the cause of the natives against the godless and worldly conquistadores. Anyone familiar with the propaganda of the Nazis, familiar the preemptive actions of the Nazis to neutralize the Christians who were the only solid resistance to the Holocaust, and familiar with the networks of Christians who both smuggled Jews out of Germany to safety and who sabotaged Hitler’s systems, can hardly plot a simple connection between ‘Christianity’ and ‘Holocaust.’
Granted such connections exist in the minds of millions. Christians must acknowledge this reality: but it must also be acknowledged as a misunderstanding.
Medearis would have gained more traction with his readers if he had prefaced such paragraphs with “sadly, millions of people have been misled into believing that … ” and “for this reason, we must avoid … when presenting Jesus to them.”
In sum, Medearis should have written a bit more carefully.
He properly exercises some humility, and attempts a clarification, when he writes:
I’m not a brilliant theologian. I could preach endless sermons and write numerous books and never say any of this stuff exactly right. Let’s simplify by making two generalized distinctions. For the duration of this book, I’ll use Christianity as the catchall term for the Western model. Western Christian history, doctrine, theology, Western-style churches, reason, dogma, and denominations are all products and parts of Christianity.
While recognizing the need for elucidation, Medearis is still painting with a brush that is a bit too wide. The baby is still in the bathwater. Is ‘Western-style reason’ something good or something bad? Does it give offense to folks in the Third World, or to Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists? Is it necessary to encountering Jesus, or can it be safely cast aside? These questions, and more, go unanswered.
Twice, separated by several pages, Medearis speaks, approvingly, of people “trying to follow Jesus.” This phrase, sadly, misplaces the emphasis onto the humans. In the final analysis, what “we” do - we humans - isn’t as interesting or significant as what Jesus is doing. Human effort is the great ‘red herring’ in theology. God’s actions are decisive.
So what’s to be done? On the one hand, Medearis makes some insightful and valuable suggestions about how “we” Christians should speak to the those “in the world” who are not explicit followers of Jesus. It makes good sense to avoid words like ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ and ‘church’ when talking to those whose experience and belief system have no good connotation for those words.
Medearis suggests that we use phrases like “followers of Jesus” as replacements for “Christians,” and in these contexts, he’s right.
But serious, faithful, and pious readers have walked away from his book, commenting that he “denigrates the church” and “undermines Scripture.” His critics allege that Medearis “under-defines” Jesus: Medearis wants us to talk about Jesus, but what exactly does this Jesus do, about Whom we’re supposed to talk? What is His nature?
Some antagonists see Medearis as involving his own ego: is he the hero of his own story? Others wonder if Medearis is all-too-aware of his own failures in ministry - he recounts such failures himself in the book - and projects them onto the church at large.
Medearis wants us to talk about Jesus. But what are we supposed to say? He alludes to “Jesus the folk hero.” This may be a good starting point, but it’s only that. More is needed. We should talk about Jesus: agreed. But in Carl’s system, is there room for Jesus to do anything? To talk about Jesus is to make Him the grammatical object in the sentence. To talk about Jesus doing something is to make Him the grammatical subject in His own clause. Does Medearis give us enough material to do that?
The only book that’s all true is the Bible. Any other book is a mixture of truth and error. Medearis has much of value to offer the reader. Charity dictates that we sift the wheat from the chaff. We take what is good from Carl’s book - and there is much good - and we quietly discard the bad, thanking Medearis for a challenging read.
