Cheapening the Gospel?
July 21st, 2007 by tempe
A few years ago, when I was a lowly Student of Theology and had to preach a sermon before my presbytery (Acts 6:1-7 was the text if anyone is curious), another fellow SoT (and fellow seminary student as well) also preached on that day. I took the task very seriously (trust me, preaching a sermon before seasoned presbyters, some of whom were seminary profs, is a daunting thing), and I assume he did as well. However, midway through his sermon, he told a joke. It was something about Jesus and Satan writing term papers when the electricity goes out and the evil one loses everything; however Jesus didn’t because “Jesus saves” (of course, his delivery was much better than that).
I’m sorry, but that is just offense to me. I don’t think my friend’s intentions were intentionally irreverent, but to equate our Lord’s atoning death to data storage really cheapens the gospel. Our Lord suffered and died in one of the most gruesome ways possible, because of our willfully rebellious sin, and the best we can do to honor Him is by speaking of His perfect sacrifice in such a frivolous manner. I have been in email contact with an unbeliever on another blog who wanted to know my opinion about such things. He is preparing to sell flash drives to Christians with “Jesus Saves” printed on the drive. I shared my above sentiments with him and told him about the risk of offending his potential client base (I also told him that I doubted that most American Christians would be offended since they don’t always tend to be particularly discerning about such things). As an analogy, I told him that most folks wouldn’t cotton too kindly to selling “I Survived Auschwitz!” t-shirts to Holocaust survivors.
Sadly, no one in the presbytery said anything negative on the floor of presbytery about the joke in the sermon (being a SoT, I had no voice, but I did tell him later that I thought it was very inappropriate). What say you, dear reader? Am I overreacting here? Am I simply being too thin-skinned? Since Christians throughout history (and today!) have bled and died for the sake of the gospel, cheapening it is something we need to take very seriously.
I think it’s quite good that you are sensitive to such precious things as Christ’s saving work.
I am the unbeliever who raised the question about selling the flash drives with the slogan on them. When the thought occurred to me, my first thought was to chuckle; my second thought was to wonder if this was something Christians would go for; my third thought was to wonder, “Is this appropriate,” eventually leading to the email conversation referenced above.
I was a little startled (though not distressed) to find myself used as an small part example of in a discussion of appropriate behavior in regard to religious discourse.
I don’t have anything profound (or perhaps even useful or interesting) to contribute. My thought is that it is up to Christians to “take care of themselves” in these matters. As a interested but also disinterested observer, I tend to lean toward tempe’s evaluation; on the other hand, if a sufficient number of Christians decide they want to buy such a product to make it worth the trouble and expense to make it available, I would have no qualms about filling orders.
Thank you for publicly objecting to the “Jesus Saves” joke. I have heard it several times, always from friends at church and cringe everytime I hear it. I don’t like to offend my church friends, so didn’t blast them for it, but perhaps I should have. It is truly demeaning of the saving work our Lord actually did for us.