To a Jewish audience asking "Why Jesus?" there is Paul's classic answer in Acts 13:38f: "Through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. and by him every one who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses."
Paul's audience here is, of course, "religious." But are forgiveness and freedom and law (of Moses even!) "religious" words, or nickel works about coping with daily life--whether people are religious or not? Bonhoeffer encourages us to say the latter. My favorite psychiatrist (a former student) said the same thing in a recent phone call: "My daily work these days? Forgiveness is what it's all about."
Bonhoeffer makes sense to her when he calls us to link our Jesus-talk directly to the concrete world we all live in, and to do so apart from any detour into religion. But for those of use lathered with lifetimes of religion, it's hard to make the distinction even when we catch glimpses.
One such glimpse if Jesus' own practice of never requiring a "belief-in-God" prerequisite before he engaged anyone. He, of course, did have such a belief, but it wasn't a test you had to pass first before he'd invite you to "Come, follow me." Actually such faith in god is a "last" where you wind up if and when the really "first" things come first.
Bonhoeffer noticed that religion already present in people, both in the Bible and in the church today, is regularly a hindrance to their hearing "why this Jesus" is Good News for them. He draws parallel to the debate among first generation Christians about circumcision. Those who held that circumcision was necessary when males became Christians were required convert to do something "religious" in order to be believers. Requiring some religious convictions ("at least be a theist") is making the same mistake all over again with today's religion-less people. And worst of all it cripples the Christian witness. You don't first have to "get people to believe in God," Bonhoeffer claimed, before you can show them "why Jesus" is good news for them.]
But is western culture still so religion-less as Bonhoeffer experienced it fifty years ago? The popular press is full of stories about religion burgeoning again on the American scene. It's not the "mainline churches," of course. But religion is succeeding all over the map. So maybe "religion-less culture" is on its way out. If it is, Bonhoeffer's counsel is that we beware, for it is probably not good news. Why? Because religion by itself is not the Good News. Religion, even Christian forms of it, is not what the Bible is all about.
In the Bible God majors in rehabilitating sinners--people with no religious pedigree at all, or if they do have one, a bad one. And there are no prerequisites or post-requisites--religious or otherwise--ever. Jesus is God's fulfillment of that rescue operation.
"When Jesus bids us to come follow him, he invites us to come and die." Bonhoeffer wrote that more and one. He included in that dying the death of religion. Religion dies so that the Gospel might come to life, viz., faith and following Christ. Even now in my "blessed old ages" (as a dear Ethiopian student addressed me when we said farewell) I still wrestle with Bonhoeffer's non-religious Gospel. But it is a very clear answer to "Why Jesus?" ehs
O-S is for
Other Saviors?
We noticed their programmatic deepening of the diagnosis when speaking to both Jewish and Hellenistic audiences. Persons committed to both Jewish and Hellenistic religions, they granted, did what in Crossings we call D-1 and D-2 diagnosis, but never got (never dared to get?) to D-3.
Uncoded, that means when proposing Good News, they probed the Bad News that their audiences already acknowledged in their own religious heritages. Everyone had a D-1: people do not always act in love as they intersect with other people and the world in general. And, yes, underlying this behavioral malady is the deeper diagnosis (D-2) that these actions come out of serious snafus on the inside--in attitudes or dispositions of the heart, soul, or mind.
We examines three other options to Jesus at Holden this summer: therapy, Buddhism, and "common sense" ethics. Capitalizing on St. Paul's answer mentioned above and that of other New Testament writers, we tried to build a model of their answer to the "Why Jesus" question.