Why Christians Don’t Like Jesus

by Tony Campolo
Red Letter Christians

"As the Red Letter Christian movement came to be known, I realized it would never be accepted. This is because many Christians don’t really like the God that is revealed in Jesus Christ. They want the God that is in the black letters. He is the God that legitimated war and many Christians feel more comfortable with war than they do with a God who tells them to love their enemies and to overcome evil with good.

Many Christians believe in retribution. They want a God who tells them that there should be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and they become furious when anyone suggests another kind of God who asks them to be merciful and forgiving. The God of grace is not to their liking. Instead, they want a God who punishes people tit for tat, and even beyond that, they want a God who will provide infinite punishment for limited sin.

The God revealed in Jesus Christ is far too generous. He gives His all in love for others, and expects us to do the same. Such a God is too demanding for most Christians. They want one that only requires a tithe. They sing about total self-giving, but in the end they would like to sing, “One-tenth to Jesus I surrender, one-tenth to Him I gladly give—I surrender one-tenth, I surrender one-tenth.” Ultimately, they want a God who declares as an abomination all of those who offend their social mores. They don’t like the God who touches lepers, embraces Samaritans, declares women equals, and has the audacity to say to gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and bisexuals, “Whosoever will may come.” They don’t like the God that is revealed in those red letters of the Bible because Him embraces those whom they want to reject. They prefer the God of the black letters so evident in the Hebrew Bible, the God who declares certain races unclean and would render women who are menstruating as unacceptable in the house of worship.

They want a God who, when they march off to war, will be on their side and they reject the God revealed in the red letters who warns that those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

When we stumbled upon calling ourselves Red Letter Christians, we should have expected the reaction that we got because most Christians feel more comfortable with a God that is like most of us—vengeful, judgmental, and ready to mete out torture to those who do not conform to expectations—torture that goes on forever and ever. The God revealed in fullness in the Jesus we find in the red letters is not to their liking at all.

The Bible says that God created us in His own image. Unfortunately, George Bernard Shaw was correct when he said, “We have decided to return the favor.” There is no doubt that most Christians want a God in their own image, but that’s not the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. He is not an American who would carry within his psyche all the traits of judgment and prejudices so evident among those who want nothing to do with the God who breaks loose in the Sermon on the Mount. He is not the God of Jonathan Edwards, who preached “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.” Instead, the God of the red letters is the God that we find in the Beatitudes."

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April Fools.........

Losing Faith: Life’s Questions

by Tony Campolo
Red Letter Christians


The most common honest reason cited for losing faith is that it becomes impossible to believe in God if God is defined as being simultaneously all-powerful and all-loving. Thoughtful students often ask, “Where was God when Jews were being thrown into ovens at Auschwitz and at Dachau? If there is a loving God who had the power to stop it, how could such a God not act?” Or even more recently, “How could God allow such devastation to the people in Japan and Haiti?” These are fair questions. Often I have heard young people say that if that is what God and Religion are like then I want no part of it.


A good mother of four lovely children who had already lost her husband in an automobile accident is dying of cancer and her 16-year-old son asks, “God, if you are there, why don’t you heal my mother?” Another good question.

A soldier in Iraq watches as a suicide bomber drives his dynamite-rigged truck into a crowd of people in a marketplace and sees innocent people blown to smithereens, and asks God, “Where are You?” Another good question.

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All of these questions arise from one basic fallacy and that is that God is simultaneously loving and infinitely powerful. Strangely enough, most Christians believe that both of those assertions are true even though it should seem obvious that reality is otherwise. There are those who will call it heresy, but there is little question that the God who is incarnated in Jesus Christ is a God who is not all-powerful. Instead, he is a God who has given up power in order to express his love.

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The concept of an omnipotent God came from Greek philosophers and not from the Bible. The prophets of the Old Testament declared that their God was almighty, and to them, that meant that He was more powerful than all the other gods. But the ancient Jews did not define God as a puppeteer controlling all of our actions.

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I have this final suggestion for any who doubt. Give yourself some time. Your doubt may be a temporary thing. Faith and doubt often come and go in my own life. There are days when, for no reason that I can explain, believing comes hard. There are other days when it comes easy. And remember this—even during those times when you don’t believe in God, God still believes in you and will not let you go.

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This, That, and the Other Jesus

by Greg Garrett 

Of the criticisms I've been getting about my book The Other Jesus (and I'm not wading through anything like the abuse that Mr. Bell and Mr. McLaren face), the one I take most seriously is the accusation that I've just rejected an angry Jesus built by frightened people, and replaced him with a peace-y, justice-y Jesus of my own creation. I know we are prone to such things; Albert Schweitzer opined that we tend to find the Jesus we are looking for.

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That innate tendency toward finding what we're already looking for is why now, since returning to a faith that saved my life, I try to listen, not just talk.

It's why I try to be aware of my own filters and desires and read scripture and tradition as honestly as I can to see what new things God has to teach me.

One of the things I found soul-killing about the tradition I was raised in was the insistence that Christian faith was about unswerving belief that could not accommodate questions or disagreement.

And one of the things I have found life-giving is the idea that God is always doing a new thing, and that, as the Reformed tradition would have it, the Church is always reforming to try to get on board with that new thing God is doing.

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Like them, Jesus loved so much he was willing to live and die for the poor, the broken-hearted, the castaway, and all the rest of us schmucks.

Like them, Jesus was a spiritual leader whose beliefs led him to feed, comfort, heal, and speak out for justice.

Like them, Jesus was a person who rejected the earthly values of wealth, power, and possession for the heavenly values of compassion, prayer, and hope.

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Mass graves replace elaborate funerals in Japan

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