Politics, and Holding Paradoxes

In Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw outline and accentuate what they believe to be the politics of Jesus and attempt to spur the reader to live counter-cultural lives that emulate Jesus' teachings. They should be commended for some of their scholarship. Many people in the Church today no longer know of, much less consider, the political climate in which the New Testament was written. To take this information into account then, upholds one of the basic tenants of hermeneutics: historical context.

That being said, my issue is not with the idea of living a humble life in bearing one's cross and suffering hardship for the kingdom of God. This, I believe, is the main point of the book that gets clouded by some fairly serious matters that the authors don't address directly. In the "Co-opted and Confused" section on p.194, there is a quote from Mark Driscoll which came from Relevant magazine:

"Some emergent types [want] to recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes. In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up".

Following this, there is a quote from Paul derived from 1 Cor 1:23 "I preach Christ crucified".

I was confused at first, because I failed to see how both of these things aren't true. Driscoll is merely recalling how Christ is pictured at the end of the Age: triumphant, and coming in judgment, his enemies being made a footstool under his feet. You may also recall Jesus' words in Matthew 10:34-35:

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."

G.K. Chesterton has many things to say about holding contradictions. In Orthodoxy, Chesterton sees doctrine as the main thrust of managing the contradictions of peace and war. "By defining its main doctrine, the Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed them to break out in a sort of artistic violence otherwise possible only to anarchists". The Cross of Christ, and orthodox Christianity as defined in the Apostle's Creed is the linchpin of his entire discussion.

In reading Jesus for President, I began to get the feeling that the Cross of Christ was being misrepresented, even if only indirectly. This is something that was deeply unsettling, and I must admit, not knowing the authors personally, I was unsure if I was reading too much into their views or if some of their other views were unstated. The view put forward was one of example - but only one of example: i.e. "He himself was like a sheep killed by wolves. By freely accepting crucifixion, he demonstrated what a sheep among wolves looks like" (p. 277). No mention of Christ's atoning work at all. While I understood the thrust of the book was not "theological" in nature, the implied denial of this cornerstone of Christianity flirts with heresy. At the very least it limits the true breath and depth of the Cross of Christ to mere moralism and a social gospel that doesn't save anyone.