Does Jesus Make a Difference?

BC's Re-Opening Plan and more than "the creation of a possibility"

BC’s Re-Opening Plan

As I write this, the political and public health authorities in British Columbia are answering questions about their just announced “Re-Opening Plan” for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is clear that many people are eager to get back to whatever normal will mean after this past year and a half. There is also a nervousness about what life might look like after the pandemic. There is anxiety over reconnecting with people, over patterns of work and social life, over the ability to cope with the pace of things.

Try this for a mind exercise. Imagine a person who determines that the pandemic will never actually come to an end. Long after restrictions are lifted they continue to live as if the pandemic is in full swing. They refuse to see friends or loved ones. They only eat outside of restaurants. They always, always, always wear a mask and maybe they are the last person on earth to bang pots and pans at 7pm every evening.

The mind exercise above points out a difficulty of common evangelical theology when it comes to belief about Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. I offer up the following thoughts, not to argue for one way of believing over another, but simply to point out a problem that was present in most theology I encountered within the evangelical church. I call it the “small Jesus problem", but Karl Barth called it “only the creation of a possibility”.

An often unspoken (sometimes spoken) view within evangelical belief is that only a relatively small percentage of people who have ever lived are “saved”. Salvation, in most evangelical settings, is dependent upon the action and belief of people. That is, if you don’t believe it (the sacrifice of Jesus) and say that you believe it, then you are not actually saved. Since the majority of people who have lived on earth in history have not believed this, then the majority of people are unsaved. That’s how the thinking goes. I call this the “small Jesus problem” because the Jesus of this understanding turns out to be pretty ineffective. He fails most people, and his role over all history is basically a rescue mission for a relative few. Barth called this “only the creation of a possibility” because he saw that this way of believing puts the emphasis on human behaviour and decision, not on what Jesus has done. Jesus winds up being utterly useless (or worse) unless YOU do something about it. For Barth, this way of believing was far too focused on humanity, not focused enough on God.

Barth was on one occasion asked “When were you saved?” His reply was to say, “When Jesus gave his life on Golgotha and was raised from the dead.”

In other words, Barth believed that Jesus actually accomplished something that has made a difference in the world for ALL people. It is not too harsh to say that many evangelicals do not believe this. That is why this view is of a “small Jesus”.

The Constant Pandemic Person in the mind exercise above might remind those who are familiar with evangelical sermons of illustrations that challenged people to believe. These illustrations would cast “non-believers” as those in need of a reality check. I have come to think that it is often Christians themselves who can fail to see that the work of Jesus was actually useful, for all people. Who Jesus was and what Jesus did changed the world. You don’t even have to believe it to be blessed by it.

I don’t believe that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus was only for the “creation of a possibility”. As Barth argued, it was not only the setting up of a model or an example. Consider what it might mean to believe that Jesus’ giving of his life has made a difference for all of history, for ALL people. This is not a universalist statement, it is rather a question.

How might you live and grow in faith by truly believing that what Jesus did was so much more than the “creation of a possibility”?