Not... exactly what I meant.
First, we have to get the most prominent factor out of the way. I am a goddamn hipster. I wear thick-rimmed glasses and a lot of button-up shirts and I prefer bands you've never heard of and microbrews and everything. I'm not the most hipstery hipster out there. I don't have an old-school bike and I haven't listened to anything on vinyl since I was a widdle baby. But I'm pretty hipster.
And there's something sort of weird about the way Jesus gets presented in different churches. For some, he's your pretty average blonde-haired, blue-eyed savior, like you've seen a thousand times. But a lot of folks tend to mold Jesus to be whatever it is they need him to be in order to make him relatable or palatable, depending on your outlook. So African-American churches might have a black Jesus, hippies prefer the peace-and-love Jesus, and megachurches like Jesus more rebellious and cool, preferably with whatever the Galilean equivalent of sunglasses and a motorcycle might be.
Rather often, particularly while I was in youth group, it was that rad Jesus that was pushed on us most. Well, sort-of-rad, anyways. Respectably rad. After all, you can't really preach modesty if your Jesus is so cool he'd have groupies. So he was the Rebel With a Cause (get your t-shirt at Heaven & Earth now!), who only turned over tables because he was justifiably angry, who thinks taxes are still groovy, who had an attitude but only towards bad people.
And let me tell you, if there's one thing people like me hate, it's someone who's cool. I didn't want the cool Jesus, because that meant Jesus was just like all the jackasses at school I wasn't particularly fond of. So I tended to always internally get really weirded out whenever we started doing worship songs about wanting the touch of Jesus or whatever (problematic since I was in the praise band) and sermons about doing something/not doing something to keep Jesus happy/not make Jesus sad were a tad ineffectual at times because I didn't really care much about what Jesus thought. Besides, he loved me either way, so that was a moot point!
Now, God, I understood. God was the big floating whatever in the sky who saw everything and knew everything and could do everything. And the Holy Spirit was this actually cool sentient wind that gave you inspiration and made you feel all tingly and whatever. But something about the nepotism never sat right with me.
Some time away from church in college helped dull my outlook a bit, but you never really totally lose that initial understanding you get growing up in church. But now I was becoming quite the little pop culture junkie, and it was getting difficult to ignore the celebrity of Jesus H. Christ. Again, the other two thirds of the Trinity seemed to be getting the raw deal, doing all the hard work behind the scenes (I mean literally unseen), and what did Jesus have to do, thirty three years of admittedly tough work and then he gets to just sit at the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth Etc., wearing his cool shades and drinking some obscure cocktail from his replica Holy Grail and chatting up all the sexy angels or whatever.
I was in college, sue me.
Even though my perception was admittedly warped, I still adamantly argue that the celebrity of Jesus is undeniable. The two biggest church holidays are all about him. Almost all prayers are directed at him. He's the savior, he's lord, he's King of Kings. There is a church in my hometown that is literally called The Church of Jesus. Am I the only one that thinks that sounds just a teensy tiny tad like a cult? And when someone name-drops Jesus like twenty times in a row when they're praying? This is all I hear...
"HELP ME TOM CRUISE"
Again, I will admit wholeheartedly that some of this stems from the fact that I grew a sort of theological crush on the Holy Spirit because it just gets no love whatsoever while JC hogs the spotlight. I was a serious spiritual hipster, and I can't deny it for a second.
But I continue to think that there's something noteworthy in the way I was so quick to dispatch of my faith in Jesus. The signs were there, right up til the end, one of my last papers before the big UMC drop was all about Doubting Thomas. It all has to add up to something, right? Am I crazy for thinking that maybe Jesus never wanted to be a celebrity? That really was a big breaking point for me, the reason I jumped over and joined the local UU fellowship, because I couldn't deal with Jesus-talk anymore. It was bad enough calling Jesus King anymore, but really I wanted nothing more to do with him.
To wit, I want to stare long and hard at the moon, not the finger that points. I don't care about the finger, and sometimes I felt so guilty for not caring about the finger, so I pretended to care about the finger. But the more I did, the more ridiculous I felt when all that time there was a big moon just glowing away in the sky. Maybe it's made of cheese or maybe that shape really is a man's face. We'll never find out because we're too busy putting little googly eyes and a paper crown on the pointing finger.
Pictured: Jesus...?
Now don't get me wrong. I would hate to think I'm sounding super judgmental right now. Jesus is the main jam for a lot of folks. Some of my best friends are Christians, and good for them! They've found what they need. For a long time, I was made to believe that was what I needed, and I went with it for a while before realizing I didn't have to follow that path. I'll be doing my own thing from now on, but that's just it, it's my own thing. All I ever wanna see is others doing their own thing. And if that involves celebrity Jesus, that's great.
I just worry about the effect this is having on Christianity. There's no one singular reason that churches are having an attendance problem, and it'd be foolish to blame it on one thing anyways. Rather, I'd just like to maybe add something to the list. Give Jesus a break. He was only supposed to work a thirty three year shift, and somehow he ended up getting talked into working the late shift for another couple... millennia. Maybe let the dude go get some coffee? I think he's probably earned it.
