My Weird God Story.

Let's call this Sermon Sez: The Prequel. This goes back to Walk Across The Room: the Power of the Story. This was a tremendous series of messages about sharing your faith and loving others enough to share Christ. Pastor George (PG) and Pastor Greg (PG2) talked about investing in others lives and being open to the Holy Spirits leading. Great stuff. But one comment has caused me to ponder: 'leave out your weird God story' when talking to people about Jesus. Now I am pretty sure I understand why PG said what he said (and I should add, when he did his 'Christianize' language it was snot roll out your nose funny, and I heard it five times!) And I am a firm believer in loving people where they are, garbage and all, just like Christ loved (and still does) me. I believe in being down to earth and meeting people where they are. But here are my quandaries:

1. How can you truly introduce someone to Jesus without THE weird God story?
2. Why are our weird God stories considered weird?

The first one bothers me a lot. I sometimes feel that we (Christians in America in general) water down the Gospel to make it more 'palatable', to be more socially acceptable, almost as if we are trying to make Jesus easier to accept. We share sort of a psychologist Jesus, a Jesus who loves you and wants you to feel good about yourself. A Jesus who is there to help you through your problems. A Jesus who is motivational speaker #1 and has blessings for you. And while all those have truth to them, the only way to truly have relationship with Jesus is based in THE weird God story. Don't believe me? How about this for weird:

• Jesus died for me. That's weird. Don't take my word for it, read Romans 5:6-8. Paul says that someone might, just maybe, kinda sorta could, die for someone who was really, really, really good. But probably not. Yet Christ did exactly that for me, a sinner. Not a really, really, really good person. Not even a really really, heck, not even really good. But full of junk and sin, Jesus took my place on the cross. It was as if He looked my straight in the eye and said "relax, I've got this one for you" as He walked to Calvary.
• Christ rose from the dead. Not right away. Not after 24 hours. Not after 48 hours. But after 72 hours. 3 freaking days! That's weird. Don't believe me? Then name five people that you know who have died and rose after three days? Not five? How about three? What about naming two? Still to many? Other than Jesus, name one. I dare you. I double dog dare you.

See, that's some weird stuff. And without accepting those two weird truths and responding to Jesus and His forgiveness, there is no salvation, no true relationship with Christ, no becoming a child of God. It is not enough to show people the Jesus who will make you feel better, for 'feeling better' is temporary. It is not enough to show people the 'Jesus loves you and can help you through your tough time,' for more tough and even tougher times lie ahead. No, you must show people the Weird Jesus; the life changing Jesus, the saving Jesus. Weird? You bet.

The second part, the thing about why are our God stories considered weird? Well that will be for tomorrow.

Does any of this make sense, or am I just nuts to you?