Of all men, most to be pitied

 I was just reading about 'of all men, most to be pitied,' this morning, it was Paul talking about the sad plight of true Christians if there was no resurrection from the dead, but in our enlightened modern age, I think this applies most to the complacent, comfortable, country club church wherein Nice Jesus sits idly by and smiles benignly at all and sundry, sort of like those creepy Ronald McDonald statues that used to sit in a booth at the iconic restaurant.  But then again, Nice Jesus didn't rise from the dead, he came preaching love and tolerance and niceness, acceptance of everything and everyone, that everybody should be happy and always get along, or at least pretend to.  He wears sandals and maybe sunglasses, has a perfect smile and long hair, maybe even a tie-dye shirt and he is most definitely an upper middle class white guy, probably a younger, hipper version of Santa Claus.

There is no grunge, no offense, no blood, no righteous judgement, no hatred of sin, no poverty or hunger or exhaustion, no suffering or grief, nothing real or gritty or relatable except to the socially comfortable with their own inane grins and social media perfect lives, as vapid as their facial expressions.  If Nice Jesus was a true friend of sinners, but he's only a Facebook friend, he'd want to help them out of the quagmire of their sin, but he's more of a drug dealer or a shallow acquaintance who doesn't want to be bothered by someone else's problems: he'd rather pretend everything is okay and enable you in your wretchedness.  We'll just change our perception of the reality, though nothing actually changes, we just all think the Emperor has some nifty clothes.

But the culture is dumping Jesus altogether, be he Nice or Real.  You can't be a comfortable Christian any longer, individuals and whole churches need to decide who they are going to follow, what they are going to believe.  Nice Jesus isn't culturally acceptable anymore, Real Jesus has never been.  So if you are going to suffer for the Name, it had better be for the Real thing, otherwise you most certainly deserve pity because Nice Jesus isn't going to save anybody, but the Real Jesus came precisely for that.  He came into our mess, our disaster, our sin and death, grief and sorrow, and He embraced it fully, God became Man, became Flesh, for us!  He doesn't want to smile benignly while we destroy ourselves and His creation with our rampant sin and selfishness, rather He invites us to embrace His cross, our own destruction, that we ourselves and the world might be saved through Him, rather than smiling benignly as we rush joyously into eternal destruction.  Nice Jesus will sit there smiling benignly as you burn, whereas Real Jesus stands in the fire with those that are truly His.  The cultural fire is heating up, who are you going to choose?