Why Crush Jesus?

If God is who we say he is, and the world is really in the shape it's in - why are there not multitudes of people being drawn to Jesus?

Image by Steve Wampler via Flickr

That question assumes a lot of things and is really an oversimplification. I am afraid the rest of article is pretty much the same way. If you can live with that in order to learn "Why Crush Jesus?", then read on.

America is decaying. We are in some serious trouble. In fact, forget the threat of "terror"... with it's colored "threat-levels". We have a real state of emergency and it's not because some crazy terrorist might attack us.

We are a culture and a country that is attempting suicide - the most heartless death of all. We are destroying ourselves from the inside out. The really bad news is the fact that the "good news" is apparently not good enough to turn our suicide into just an attempt. Even though there are gospels and bibles and christian stuff everywhere, overall the country is still going through with it. We are attempting suicide and if something doesn't change... if something doesn't subvert and interrupt our attempt to kill ourselves, the bottom line is we will do it.

I could talk a lot about the evidence of our suicidal ways, about the corruption in America at the highest levels, the social injustice we encourage, the moral degradation we are selling to our youth, the gross hypocrisy our nation models to the world, and on and on.

Image by jakebouma via Flickr

However, the sentence you just read about the proliferation of christian stuff in a suicidal culture... this is what I want to deal with. See, as we move in this suicidal direction there has to be a reason that the message of hope and love and forgiveness doesn't seem to draw people.

If God is who we say he is, and our country is really in the shape I describe - why are there not multitudes of people being drawn to Jesus?

Mark 3:9 "So He told His disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for Him because of the multitude, lest they should crush Him." - NKJV

Look at this verse... are you kidding me? Read that again, "...lest they should CRUSH Jesus?" Holy Cow.. Jesus almost got crushed! Thank God it didn't happen... otherwise he wouldn't of made it to the cross. And I don't know about you, but being crushed by a stampede just isn't the way Jesus should go!

Read the verse one more time.... actually back up to verse 7 (seriously, go read it right now) and see it in context.

Why are the multitudes being drawn to Jesus? It tells us "when they heard how many things He was doing". What was he doing? Who was he doing it to? We see in verses 1-6 that Jesus was healing someone on the Sabbath in a

Image via Wikipedia

synagogue and a result of this was multitudes following after him. But it wasn't that Jesus healed one man on one Sabbath day and had one conflict with the conservative right-wing pharisees. It's that he became known for doing many such things. He was known for making a practical difference among the ordinary people and for subverting the self-appointed moral police.

This thing Jesus was doing... the person he was being and life he was living (and still is) struck such a chord with the "multitudes" that they almost crushed him... that's how much they were being drawn to him.

The truth is, I believe the reason that the multitudes in America aren't being drawn to Jesus is because they simply aren't being exposed to him. They don't see his life being lived in the majority of American Christianity. They don't hear of the "many things" he is doing to make a practical difference in the lives of ordinary people. What they do hear and see is that we have become more like the self-appointed moral police than the ones that give them problems.

And let's be clear, it's not that Jesus ISN'T doing the same type of stuff that drew the multitudes in Mark chapter 3. It's just that he isn't prominently doing it in mainstream American Christianity.

Matthew Armstrong