While Christianity has many critics their complaints are rarely if ever directed at Jesus. They blame the Christian machine and those who call themselves followers of Christ, but feel compelled to claim Jesus as their own. While they may deny that Jesus is the only way they seem convinced that He needs to have at least a little skin in the their salvation game.

Atheism denies His divinity but acknowledges He makes a really nice role model for highly evolved beings. Liberal theologians let Jesus found a religious movement but treat Him as merely a good first century teacher and in the process reduce church to a history class and the Lord’s Supper to a Civil War reenactment. Religious groups that acknowledge a spiritual realm give Jesus a bit more street cred, but sadly transform Him into an enlightened Buddha, a god in the Hindu pantheon, or the prime example of a human achieving God consciousness. They all take poetic license and morph Jesus into whom they want and fail to recognize who He truly is. You cannot pick and choose what you want to believe about Jesus. You may want Him to be a card-carrying member of your religious movement, but it is dishonest to portray Him in any other way than He is described in the Gospels since they are the only historically reliable documents we have about His life and ministry.

While it is discouraging to see Jesus used in such an irresponsible manner, it is even more disturbing that these groups find it so easy to speak of Him apart from the church He founded. The rest of the world doesn’t seem to see any connection between what they know about Jesus and the way the Christian church talks or behaves. How did the real Jesus become separated from Christianity? How is it possible that secular people can find more holiness in an empty cathedral than in a church packed to the gills with Christians? Entering an empty church they feel the fire of God’s presence only to have it extinguished by a brigade of Christian firefighters. If we don’t start looking more like the body of Christ, the world won’t see any family resemblance. If we treat Jesus like a moving part in the Christian apparatus then we give every other religion license to do the same. Jesus is the head of the church so let’s stop looking like a headless corpse and start acting more like His living breathing Body.

For those people mingle Jesus Christ with their teachings just to gain your trust under false pretenses. It is as if they were giving deadly poison mixed with honey and wine, with the result that the unsuspecting victim gladly accepts it and drinks down death with fatal pleasure. — Letter of Ignatius to the Trallians (110 A.D.)