Bobble Head Jesus – Really?
John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory,the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
To incarnate (become flesh,) to flesh out Jesus into our world truly is the missionary, no, it is every believer’s calling. It is through this incarnation that disciples of Jesus communicate the Gospel of God. A gospel that tells of a God who loves us and gives His Son as a benevolent sacrifice in order to remove any hindrances to a present and ongoing love relationship with the trinity that He exists in. We cannot “flesh out” Jesus within the sanctimonious walls of our church or institutions of higher learning. Such an attempt would only develop some stolid and remote expression of this divine love. It is out on the streets, where, well, the rubber meets that road that the divine love must be made know. It is in and amongst the people and their culture that we must do the fleshing out of our Jesus. It is up to us to flesh out so that others can now behold His glory… full of grace and truth. I heard a national youth pastor commenting on John 1:14, once say, “If you ain’t flesh’n ain’t no one behold’n.” Yet, it is in this very attempt to flesh out that we struggle with. As Veling, we are all interpreters. “We live in the world as interpreters of the world that we are always interpreting ourselves and the world around us.”[1] There is an Italian adage traduttori traditori (translators [are] traitors). I believe this statement could apply to interpreters as well. Being bilingual I know all to well the difficulty of attempting to translate or interpret the message form one person of a given language to another person who does not understand the first person’s language. There is a fine line to walk so as not to betray the message being conveyed through you. However difficult this may be, every Christian is called upon to translate God’s message for a people who do not understand God’s language. It is the goal of contextualization, that of doing theology (the study of God) while taking into account all that makes up the culture and people that we are attempting to convey the message to.[2] Contextualization is a tricky endeavor indeed. We must stay true to the Gospel and yet, how much do we equate tradition with the Gospel. The very process of contextualizing is a practice in self-discernment and self-discovery. The Church as we know it today is a product of the the richness that she has profited from both history and development of the very humans that dwell within her shelter.[3] To separate the “true gospel” from what we have “always known” is a difficult exercise. Veling refers to the difficulty of differentiate whether it is my current reality that provides the “lens” through which I search scriptures, “or does my searching of scriptures provide the ‘lens’ through which I view my current reality.” A faithful response to this an other complexities helps us to determine if we can properly interpret, translate, and contextualize the gospel to the people around us. Allow me to end with a personal example. Change is difficult for all of us. Having familiar traditions change to accommodate the interpretation of theology in the context of a different culture is difficult for us to handle. There is the question of how far is too far in stripping away what has become known to us in our tradition for the sake of accommodating other’s traditional development? A young man, 15 years my junior came to assist me with the youth group that I created and nurtured for 4 years as I transitioned to the Sr. Pastor role. One of the things that his younger generation enjoyed was the different personifications that Jesus was taking on through the multiple blogs and social media. The one that I had the most difficulty with was the bobble head Jesus as the Joe Cool Jesus. Pictured here for your enjoyment. 
My concern with this “contextualization” attempt was the possible watering down of the true gospel to a three dollar gospel of God as Wilbur Rees’ poem below illustrates. Our current entertainment driven, selfish, and individualistic culture needs the Gospel, but the difficulty is my own religious traditions that keep my lens fogged from seeing what is really the true Gospel and what God really wants me to translate to this younger culture here and around the world. Pray for me as I attempt to continue to be flesh’n so others around me can continue to be behold’n.
Three Dollars Worth of God
I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of God to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation. I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
— Wilbur Rees
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