How to Make Your Very Own Jesus

From VirtueOnline, "The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism"

How to Make Your Very Own Jesus

by Daniel J. Phillips

For ages, people have found Jesus to be an uncomfortable figure. He claimed honors belonging properly only to God (John 5:22, 23), held Himself out as the only solution for sin (Matthew 20:28), and accepted worship as God (John 20:28). What's even more threatening, He backed up these claims by a succession of unequaled miracles (John 15:24), climaxing in His own bodily resurrection (Matthew 12:39, 40).

Like many of Jesus' other ideas, these claims are clearly "incorrect," politically and socially. Worse still, they're unpopular!Not to worry! If you don't like the Jesus of the Bible, you can make your very own "Jesus." Here's how to do it, in six easy steps.

Begin with demolition work. First, paint the Gospels as fundamentally unreliable, unhistorical, and biased. Now, this will mean rough going, for several reasons. If you are to pull this off, your audience has to be unaware of the last hundred years of New Testament (NT) studies. Otherwise, they will know that every attempt to discredit the NT has failed miserably. They will remember that archeological, linguistic, and historical studies have systematically shown the NT to be factually reliable in every testable area. If they know the facts, it could hurt your theories. So. . . .

Second, flash some impressive academic degrees.

Click on the title to read the rest.

[NOTE: written as an article for a daily newspaper, skewering "the Jesus Seminar," its pompous pronouncements, and its book The Five Gospels, by means of parody.]

I found the article entertaining and sadly true. This could have been written for the ELCA as well.

---Katie