So, I have this shirt it says, "Jesus is my homeboy!" I get quite some looks from people especially people who have been in church for quite some time. Is that a sacrilegious thing to wear? In my opinion absolutely not!!!
When Jesus was on earth he hung out with some very low-down characters: prostitutes, tax collectors, stinky uneducated fishermen, and in general what people in the church call "sinners." He did not condone their actions, and He Himself was absolutely perfect. On the other hand, however, these sinners weren't afraid to hang out with Him. They felt safe around Jesus who showed us what God was like. Wow! That doesn't sound to me like how people act towards the church today.
I can completely picture Jesus and his disciples (followers) shouting at each other "Hey homeboy what's up?!" if they were alive today. If I have one pet peeve it's when people make God distant, too holy for anyone to approach. Jesus was amongst the masses. He had compassion on people and knew how to speak their lingo. He knew how to show love, and that is my one desire. If your language is hip hop/ homeboy talk, he talks your talk.
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2 comments:
Hey I got that shirt too!!
It's really funny to see people's reaction to it. Sometimes I get "hey! he's my homeboy too!" or nasty looks from old ladies. I think it's so funny how people take these sort of things out of context without considering the culture it's speaking to. Some people even do the same thing to scripture!
I was just ready to sign in and noticed all these blogs being updated as they scrolled up...and here I came across a blog to relate.
Sweet bloggin'
Blessings
jeff's comment about not calling Jesus "homeboy" because he doesn't call anyone homeboy is a good one - it's a word I would use only jokingly or self-effacingly.
Ames, you know how I feel about the shirt already - I think it's funny in some ways, and can shake some of the dust off of the staid religious types in our world, and I don't object to someone wearing it, but in other ways, I think it propagates a very common misconception of North American Christians - reducing Jesus to a kind of "buddy God" who will do whatever we want him to and not ever do anything uncomfortable or difficult - because, hey, he's our homeboy, right?
In reality, Jesus, and by extension, God, is a lot deeper than that. If we truly believe and grasp what our bible says, Jesus was both God and man at the same time - a reality that rocked the Jews' world because prior to Jesus' death, you couldn't even come into the holy of holies without extreme caution, lest you look upon God and die. Jews have a real sense of the true holiness of God, and a healthy fear of God that often Christians lack. We are blessed to have a thoughtful, compassionate, courageous and outspoken saviour who never ceased to model to us that He loved us unendingly and wanted us the be like children in his presence. But we can not leave behind the reality that was personified in Jesus - that He was fully the God of the OT and fully human at the same time - someone to be "best friends" with as Peter and Jesus were, but someone also to be revered, respected, obeyed...
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