shirt #10 : Feel the Force

Title: Feel the Force

Design: White legend and red 'name badge' on black

Make: Fair and Bare



Reach out and touch me

I have a personal interest in this shirt because it was my concept. It was printed by Fair and Bare – the best ethical threads on the web. Not only are F&B shirts 100% fair trade, but they are submitted and voted for by us, the people of internetland. Check them out here.

I have had a few comments about my shirt though, ranging from ‘Er, Jon, that’s a bit pervy’ through to ‘Wow that’s so cool. You must be a Jedi in disguise to come up with jokes like that.’ Okay, I haven’t quite had that second reaction, but I’ve had plenty of the former.

But is it pervy? Because deep down aren’t we all looking for intimacy, for love? I once read a story about a elderly widow who went ballroom dancing once a week. People thought she loved to dance, but in fact she hated it. She went because that was the one time a week that someone would hold her. She went for the touch, not the two-steps.

We underestimate the power of touch. I’ve been told I’m a good hugger. I don’t like to brag, and I’m not really sure that hugging well is something to brag about. But I don’t hold back in hugs. I mean it when I hug someone.

And you can sense when someone gives you a noncommittal hug, can’t you? Some hugs are like air-kisses, but even less warm. They mean ‘I want to be seen to like you.’ Rather no hug than a fake hug.

Touch is that most basic connection. It affirms you, when someone touches your arm or shoulder. A touch offers you companionship, reminding you that you’re not alone in your circumstance. It’s a wordless promise, of friendship, loyalty, support, and love.

We forget sometimes that some of Jesus’ most powerful statements were wordless. He touched a leper (Matthew 8:3), breaking one of the strongest cultural taboos of his day, and the leper was cleansed. Everything in that society told you that you don’t touch lepers. The religion, the legal authorities, the people around you – all would tell you not to touch the leper. They were unclean and their uncleanliness would be transferred to you.

Jesus touched him.

He touched the eyes of the blind and they could see (Matthew 20:34). He put his fingers into the ears of deaf mute and then touched his tongue, enabling the man to hear and speak (Mark 7:33). When he rose the dead he touched the dead body (Luke 7:14) – another cultural taboo.

Touch was an instrumental part of Jesus’ miracles, and is usually linked to him feeling compassion. You ever feel that - when all you want to do is put your arms around someone and somehow hug away their pain? And of course, many wanted Jesus to touch them, because in his touch was power (Luke 6:19, Mark 5:25-34). But there are also other ways in which he used touch to connect with people.

At the event known as the Transfiguration in Matthew 17, the disciples are overcome with fear. Jesus’ response is to touch them and tell them not to be afraid. The account doesn’t give details, but I imagine a reassuring hand on the shoulder. “Don’t be afraid.” We can face down anything if we know we have back up; overcome any challenge if someone will be there with us. A touch is all we need sometimes to cast out fear.

There’s an interesting aspect to Mary Magdalene’s encounter with Jesus in the garden (John 20:10-18). She is standing distraught by the empty tomb, and didn’t recognise Jesus. It’s hard to see someone clearly if you are weeping uncontrollably, particularly if you think they are dead. When she does realise who it is, one of the first things Jesus has to tell her is to let go of him.

I can’t imagine how tightly Mary was hugging Jesus, but the implication is she would not have let go if he hadn’t asked. We cling to those we love, reassured in the warmth from their body, even as we say goodbye to them. That’s why we hug on train stations and at airports. Sometimes the only way we can convey our emotions is through allowing our bodies to touch.

It’s a profound irony that Depeche Mode begin their song ‘Personal Jesus’ with the line ‘Reach out and touch me’. It couldn’t be more apt. Jesus, it seems, was a hugger.

I would go so far as to say that the times we are most like Jesus aren’t when we’re doctrinally right in what we say, or caught up in a worship song, or reading ‘Every Day With Jesus’ in our quiet time, or any of the other myriad religious things we do. I think it’s those times when we reach out to help someone to their feet, or hold a grieving friend, or accept a sullen teenager with a pat on the shoulder, or shake hands with someone who everyone else ignores.

That’s when we feel the force of what it means to be human. And in a strange way what it means to be Christ-like too.

shirt #9: Movies - ruining the book since 1920

Title: Movies - ruining the book since 1920

Design: white slogan and grey graphic on black

Make: Threadless

Blue-eyed Jesus

Cinema is the medium for telling the biggest stories. And there’s been a temptation since film-making began to try and tell the greatest story ever told. Jesus doesn’t get much bigger than on the big screen.

Every film gives us a new cultural take on Jesus. Monty Python tried to do the messiah as comedy, while Martin Scorsese asked ‘what if Christ doubted his divinity?’ Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ contained what was probably the most accurate depiction of the gore of crucifixion ever for cinema-goers just getting into ‘Saw’ movies, while The Da Vinci Code rewrote history by blatantly plagiarising from several ‘alternative historians’. And then there was Dogma, with the Buddy Christ ready to welcome us all into Heaven, even if we are fallen angels.

What does this tell us, this cultural obsession with Jesus? More importantly, how can so many films get it so different? Why do we feel the need to rewrite the story to suit our own ends?

One thing most of those films do is humanise Jesus. Life of Brian, for all it’s faults (and minor blasphemies), does ask the thought-provoking question ‘what if people made a mistake?’ Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ has a very human Jesus tempted to quit and live a normal life. The Da Vinci Code – one example where a film-maker simply couldn’t ruin the book because the book was execrable – again paints a picture of a human Christ.

But those aren’t the only films that somehow seem to get Jesus a little bit wrong. Most of us of a certain age will have watched Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, with Robert Powell as the good-looking blue-eyed messiah, surrounded by an all-star ensemble cast. Apparently Zeffirelli instructed Robert Powell to try not to blink, to make him stand apart from the other characters and give him an other-worldliness. It works. Watch the movie. It’s a bit creepy.

The ‘Jesus’ evangelistic film follows the same route – an altogether too good-looking chap who seems to float ethereally through the main gospel events. I watched about ten minutes of it, and I have to admit I turned it off out of cringing embarrassment.

About ten years ago I had a row with another church leader who wanted us to go door-to-door offering people the opportunity to watch the Jesus video. I made what I felt was the very valid point that I didn’t feel such an airbrushed view of Jesus with such low production values was going to cut it in the inner city area we were working in. People were used to blockbusters and we were giving them a less-than-great movie.

He challenged me on my negativity – ‘How could I possibly say that people wouldn’t respond. Thousands of people had become Christians as a result of watching it.’ Me, being well-versed in hype, questioned that, and asked if he knew any of these converts, at which point he told me my argument was stupid.

Truth was, we were both arguing from ignorance. But he had seniority and so plans were made to distribute the video. It wasn’t a successful evangelism tool. Hey, sometimes you have to let people learn the hard way. Especially those who have seniority.

But seriously, what I think that film missed is that it was too earnest; too interested in capturing the absolute awesomeness of who Christians claim Jesus to be. In films like that, Jesus has to be ‘different’, ‘other-worldly’, slightly spooky, and what you end up with a borderline-autistic alien proclaiming epithets and coining proverbs at random.

It doesn’t seem to ring true with the earthy Jesus in the Bible. This is the Jesus who frequents the kind of parties that earn disapproving tsks from the holiest people of the day. At one meal, a known prostitute enters the room, weeps over Jesus’s feet and wipes her tears away with her long hair.

That scene sounds embarrassingly intimate just in the one-line summary I’ve given you. She wipes his feet with her hair? You don’t want to watch that. People don’t know where to look. Some people get in a huff. You can read it yourself in Luke 37: 36-50. There’s a similar story in John’s gospel when Mary of Bethany (Lazarus’ sister) does the same sort of thing (John 12: 1-8).

When I read those stories and try to imagine airbrushed, blue-eyed Jesus having that done to him it doesn’t really add up. There’s something deeper going on, as if Jesus takes that intimate – and slightly disturbing – action and transforms it into something beautiful.

The thing is people have seen the airbrushed, gentle, floaty, non-confrontational Jesus of the movies and that’s the Jesus they recognise and ignore. That Jesus doesn’t seem to have anything to say about the harsh realities of, say, getting screwed on your income tax, or putting up with bullies at work, or dealing with judgmental religious hypocrites.

And that I think is where the films get it wrong. Because Jesus talked about tax frequently (e.g. Mark 12:13-17), and how to deal with people who persecute you (e.g. John 15: 18 – 16: 4) and as for religious people… He didn’t have very many nice things to say about them at all!

That Jesus would be an interesting subject for a film. And you wouldn’t have to make up a load of tosh about him getting it on with Mary Magdelene.

shirt #8: 665 - neighbour of the beast

Title: 665 - neighbour of the beast

Design: retro numerals and white legend on navy

Make: On Fire

Ooooh, I'm scared

I saw this t-shirt and I had to have it because it’s hilarious. As someone who doesn’t really care much for end times rantings and hysterical books labelling various world leaders as the antichrist, it seemed doubly worth getting. I’m an iconoclast at heart I guess.

‘But wait, Jon,’ you may say, ‘do you mean you don’t really believe in the end times and the tribulation and the rapture and the Beast and Armageddon and the lake of fire and the conversion of the Jews and false prophets and so on?’ And my answer would be ‘Not really, no.’

At this point you might be thinking ‘Well, this blog is obviously heretical and there are much better things to read on the web’. And while I agree there may very well be much better things to read on the interweb, I’d challenge you on the charge of heresy.

The amazing truth is that when it comes to interpreting apocalyptic literature, for about 1,800 years, the literalist Left Behind-style doom-mongering would have been considered the preserve of fringe nutters who would probably be dismissed as heretics. It’s only been in recent years, mainly since the 1960s, that the whole ‘end times’ culture has taken root in churches.

That culture has been fuelled by the growth in fundamentalism as a key expression of American Christianity, and it’s been exploited by a number of preachers, teacher, authors, ‘prophets’ and church leaders who have used it to launch a career and make lots of money.

That might sound harsh, but that’s the truth. There’s good money in apocalyptism. It’s popcorn science fiction for good Bible-believin’ folks and it plays on people’s twin key motivators – fear and the desire to survive.

But I would maintain that the stuff that is published, which confidently predicts the end of the world based on what the Bible “says”, is usually utter crap. The point of Revelation, like all Biblical apocalyptic writings, is to reassure the readers that whatever happens, God is in control. Revelation is not a prophetic diary of what will happen two thousand years (or more) in the future.

Rob Bell sums it up well when he says: “Were the people in John’s church reading his letter for the first time, with Roman soldiers right outside their door, thinking ‘This is going to be really helpful for people two thousand years from now who don’t want to get left behind’?”*

There I’ve quoted Rob Bell and denied the ‘truth’ of Revelation. There really is no hope for me.

Here’s the thing. John’s readers would have interpreted Revelation in their own time as a subversive critique of Imperial power. Think about it – mighty Empires from across the sea, popular leaders demanding to be worshipped, a great city built on seven hills that is a byword for evil but will come under judgement.

What is he talking about here, if he’s not talking about the Roman Empire, the cult of Emperor worship, and Rome itself? Babylon doesn’t mean Babylon, the ruin in Iraq. It’s a metaphor. And a pretty obvious one. (The historic city of Babylon isn’t built on seven hills, so why on Earth would John say it was, if that was what he meant?)

Of course, you could be a smart aleck and argue that if American fundamentalists read Revelation the way it’s meant to be read, it could be pretty uncomfortable for them. Imagine reading about the godlessness of a mighty empire that seeks to extend its reach through primarily mercantile means into every corner of the globe and demands an unyielding fanaticism. Especially if you then had to go into a school where children stand up and salute the flag every morning. It’s much better to say it’s all about what’s going to happen, not about a human mindset that can be replicated in any Empire.

Fortunately I’m not a smart aleck. But if I was…

The preoccupation with the end times also produces some other sour-tasting fruit. For one thing, all the time taken up with ‘predicting’ who and what is a sign of the imminent end uses up valuable resources that we could use doing something useful and practical. It reminds me of what the Jedi master Yoda accused Luke of being in The Empire Strikes Back: “All his time he has looked away, never his mind on where he is, what he is doing.”

Or if Yoda isn’t authoritative enough for you, will Jesus do? Jesus tells his disciples not to worry about tomorrow, but to trust God. He also says that even the Son of Man doesn’t know the ‘day or hour’ when the end of the world is due to happen (Matthew 24:36-42). What’s more important is what you’re doing today. How are you using the talents God has given you? How are you being salty salt and illuminating light in the world?

The other thing I deeply dislike about the end times money-making game is that it takes the focus away from God and Jesus. Instead of God being the focus of our Christian lives, we get side-tracked discussing the ‘enemies’ of God – the antichrist, the Beast and so on. Incidentally, this is the same gripe I have with treatises on “spiritual warfare” and other demonology. What should we be discussing, as Christians? Surely, it’s Christ.

The books and films about the end times focus on the power of the antichrist, the way he will assume control and so on. It ignores the central message of the writers of the apocalyptic books, namely God is in charge, no matter what. And that for me is why I think we ought to consign the books the boot sale, the films to the dustbin, stop being so afraid about who ‘gog and magog’ might be, and get on with the important stuff.

And get on with it, like, now.

* Jesus Wants to Save Christians, p.134