The ‘privatisation’ of Jesus

Mar 25, 2024

Sunday  Observer- Anil Netto
Ever seen those car stickers “God loves you”? We might silently nod our heads in approval and feel reassured we have a God who cares deeply for us.

The idea of God or Jesus as a personal saviour was, perhaps, reinforced during the revival movement or in ‘born again’ circles in recent decades.

Many feel comforted by their faith in a personal saviour who saves us from our personal sins. But if we are not careful, our personal saviour could end up becoming a ‘private saviour’ and our faith a highly individualised and private one.

Our faith in the Lord of the Universe, Who sent His Spirit to transform the world, would then be reduced to an individualistic, self-centred faith, where what matters solely is the salvation of our own soul.

Not that salvation of our souls is not important, far from it. But it should be seen in a wider context. After all, the Church, as we know, is a community affair, a collective affair.

Jesus Himself measures our faith in God by how we treat the downtrodden and our neighbours in need. The famous verse John 3:16 is often used by ‘born again Christians’ to proclaim a personal saviour who redeems us from our personal sins.

But hold on a minute, look again. John 3:16 does not say, “God so loved you; He gave His only Son….”. Rather, it reads: “God so loved the world: He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

This means God loves the entire world — so our salvation should be seen in a much wider context. Our individual faith cannot be separated from God’s mission to redeem the entire world. Each of us lives in a fallen world, but it is a world that has been redeemed.

Salvation in this wider context is an invitation to belong to God’s alternative society under the reign of God … His kingdom.

One key problem with popular films about Jesus is that we see Jesus helping the poor, healing the sick and gathering little children around Him. But then, all of a sudden, Jesus is hauled up before the chief priests and is handed over to the Roman authorities to be executed.

But why? For healing the sick and proclaiming a message of love? Why would the chief priests and Caesar's local military regime be bothered by that? Why would that be a threat if that was all Jesus stood for? It almost doesn’t make sense.

No, the real threat was Jesus’ ideas and vision of an alternative society based on distributive justice, love, peace and compassion. He knew that a different world was possible.

It was this alternative vision that prompted Him to lash out at the corruption in the Temple. The very custodians of the Temple, who were entrusted to act justly and mercifully, were collaborating with earthly powers (the Roman Empire) to oppress the people.

Instead of easing the people’s burden, they were making it heavier and oppressing them. Instead of practising justice, mercy and compassion, they subverted the faith. They reduced the faith to animal sacrifices and ritualistic observances of personal purity.

Worse, they were accumulating immense wealth in the Temple, leaving a trail of misery, destitution, hunger, debt and loss of land in the countryside.

Jesus’ alternative kingdom (based on justice and compassion) contrasted starkly with the values of the Empire (based on military conquest, colonialism, subjugation and greed).

The chief priests and the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and the rest of the elite were colluding with the Roman authorities to extract wealth from the people — assorted taxes, temple taxes and tributes.

Not only that. They commercialised agriculture. They confiscated land from indebted smallholders and turned them into large estates, producing cash crops for export. They even commercialised fisheries at the Lake of Galilee.

This turned many proudly independent farmers and fisherfolk into day labourers and contract workers who found it difficult to put food on the table.

This was an early prototype of globalisation that reaped enormous profits for the elite while squeezing ordinary people into poverty. Religion was hijacked to serve the interests of power and empire. Peasants, widows and even lower-ranking priests were oppressed, their incomes ‘stolen’ by the powers that be.

Jesus’ alternative vision of the kingdom of God was seen as a threat to this neat collusion between the religious authorities and the Empire. Tellingly, when the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate asked the chief priests if he should crucify their king, they replied: “We have no king except Caesar.”

This was a profound statement. Greed often gravitates to the centres of powers in this world.

Sometimes even Christians and the Church are not spared this tendency to gravitate to centres of power. Perhaps it is for self-preservation.

Or perhaps the message of Jesus is too radical for our comfort, and we sink into a soft complacency with what is happening in the world, or maybe we even absorb the ways of this world.

What happens then is that we separate Jesus from His radical proclamation of His new kingdom. We reduce Jesus to a personal saviour and detach Him from His proclamation of a radical kingdom, which we push into a distant future or some ‘End Times’.

Worse, some groups even distort Bible verses to serve the agendas of those in power — the way Christian Zionism does.

“Here in Palestine, the Bible is weaponised against us,” a Lutheran pastor in occupied Bethlehem, Rev Munther Isaac, observed.

Yes, today, the Bible has been ‘weaponised’ by some quarters to provide theological cover for the perpetrators of modern-day settler colonialism, unsustainable economic growth and even genocide.

In Gaza today, we see a classic case of the use of Scriptures to provide theological cover for the genocide taking place there. How else do we explain the silence among many Christians, especially ‘Christian’ world leaders, about the genocide taking place there?

Munther said he does not see the real Jesus nor the authentic Gospel message in those pushing the message of Christian Zionism.

The situation in Gaza and the rest of Palestine today mirrors what was happening in Palestine during the time of Jesus.

Jesus knew precisely what it was like to live under occupation. The local rulers, like the high priest and Pilate, were the extension of Caesar in distant Rome. Today, we have a different set of local rulers in Palestine, an extension of and in the service of a distant Empire.

If Jesus was walking the Earth today instead of 2,000 years ago, would He be seen as a threat to the powers that be? Would they bother executing Him?

Have we so successfully privatised Jesus that the powers of this world would see Him as of little threat to their goal of world domination and unimaginable wealth?

This Holy Week and Easter, let us liberate the message of Jesus from the shackles of this world that have ‘privatised’ Him.

And let us loudly continue calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza. Thy Kingdom come on Earth as it is in heaven.

(Anil Netto is a freelance writer and activist based in Penang. He believes we are all called to build the kingdom of God in this world)