Abusive Jesus

When I was a kid we got a new pastor who yelled a lot from the pulpit. Talked a lot about hell and sin and judgement and getting your life right. He stayed in the same pulpit until just a couple of years ago. I remember hearing people in my church, mostly males, speak about how much they admired Brother Terry as a preacher. They liked having a pastor who "wasn't afraid to step on our toes a little."

When I was a teenager I went to camps and Super Summer a lot. I heard a lot of youth speakers speak, in different ways, about hell and sin and judgement and getting your life right. They would say a lot of stuff about how Jesus wants your natural self to die. A friend of mine recently talked to someone who was a big Neil McClendon fan. In describing one particular message of Neil's he noted that "God just shredded our hearts," obviously (probably) stealing that phrase from Neil himself.

A couple of months ago I ran into an old friend. She was telling me about her four year old daughter and how God is working on her life, even now. In fact, just a few days before, her daughter came to her and said (also probably stealing this language from her mom,) "You know, mom, God's really been working on my heart lately." At which point my friend asks, "Really? How's he been doing that?" To which her daughter replied, "With a jackhammer." This friend of mine told the story with great pride.

When I was in high school I used to pick this girl up for school in the morning. It was pretty far out of my way, being on a dirt road that is about two miles off of any county road. I didn't mind, though, because she was funny and a good person to talk to. She was also pentecostal. I didn't really know what that meant, other than that they talked funny during their services. One Monday morning I drove down the dirt road to pick her up. When she got in I did the niceties, "How's it going? How was your weekend?" At which point she replied, "It was ok. I went to church on Sunday. I got slain in the Spirit." Not having any mental categories in which to fit this statement, but perceiving a slaying of any kind to be negative, I responded "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." She looked at me funny. I didn't know why until a couple of years later when I watched TBN for the first time.

Hearts being shredded and worked on with a jackhammer. Toes being stepped on. Spirits being slain. Why as Christians do we adopt this abusive language so often to describe how God changes us? Why can't we just say, "You know, God has been changing me. I'm not sure how, but it feels good."

Instead we'd rather have a God whose desire is to beat the living crap out of us in order to get us to be the people he wants us to be. I know there are deep theological discussions that pretty much, wherever you stand, determines how abusive your language is when describing how God works on your life. Obviously someone with a strong "original sin" bent is going to lean more towards this teminology, while someone who would rather focus on the imago dei would shy away from such language.

But I believe in original sin, I think. But I'm just very uncomfortable with seeing God as and abusive Father.

But who am I to judge?