If the prophets of the Bible were to appear on the scene in our day they would be lectured on winsomeness and shipped off for a Dale Carnegie re-education course. The court prophets of Evangelicalism would write long-winded think pieces against such “troublers of Israel,” in which they opine, “If only these Tishbites would stop destroying their evangelistic potential by cracking wise when Baal won’t come out of his bathroom.”

Turning the Tables on Christian Respectability
I blame Mrs. Hill. She was my childhood Sunday School teacher and she started it. She taught me the stories of Jesus with her warm smile and worn-out flannel graph. She would place paper figures of Jesus and the disciples on the flannel-covered board and move them about to illustrate the particular lesson for the day. I learned about a wee little man and his sycamore tree, a boy who gave Jesus his sack lunch, and Lazarus who rose like an Egyptian mummy from the dead. But mostly I learned about Jesus. Jesus, mean and wild.
I blame Mrs. Hill and her flannel graph for my contrariness. It was that story about Jesus turning the tables on the religious power-brokers of his day that got my blood up. To me this was the most exciting story of them all. Some of the more pious saints later told me that Jesus acted  “out of character” when he pitched a fit in the general direction of the merchants selling their wares in the temple, but somehow I knew better than that. Jesus turned over the tables because he was mad as an old wet hen. If the picture of Jesus as a “raging rabbi” unsettles you, then the point of it all is getting through.
He was angry.  He sent pigeons and penny-filled purses flying hither and yon. He scattered the sheep with cords and threatened the goats who were selling them for exorbitant prices. The zeal of the Lord consumed him. And as I heard the story it started gnawing at me pretty good too.
She didn’t paint a portrait of the Jesus who could do wonderful shampoo commercials, with his silken hair and perfectly apportioned face. She taught us that Christ had fire in his eyes and lighting in his fists. He was no doormat deity. He was anything but respectable. That made him worthy of respect.
He saw Peter, James, John, Matthew, and the rest being drones and he told them to walk away from it all. “Follow me,” he said. And they did. They weren’t cut out to be cutouts.
Jesus Christ was paradox incarnate. He blessed the down and out and he cursed the high and mighty. He stooped down to prostitutes and stood up to pharisees. He wasn’t given to the trite dearlybelovedism of most modern ministers. He addressed his combative congregants as pit vipers, whitewashed tombs, bastard sons of Abraham, and other glowing appellations. And he did so without quenching one smoking flax.
Every now and then we need to remind ourselves that Jesus had a rotten testimony. That is, He often behaved and spoke in ways that some of our more pious brethren would consider “un-Christlike.” Although no one could convict him of any sin (John 8:46), this did not prevent His enemies from talking as though they could. He was, it turns out, a glutton (Luke 7:33), a drunk (Matt. 11:19), a blasphemer (Mk. 14:64), and a companion of the disreputable (Mk. 2:15). To say that he was a man of questionable reputation would be putting it quite mildly.
Sometimes I entertain myself with thoughts of great men from the past hopping into a time machine in order to pay a clandestine visit to the institutions that were named after them. Most of these thought experiments end with furniture scattered around waiting rooms, toppled desks, broken glass, and whirling sirens in the background. And if you doubt that our “venerable dead” might behave in such an untoward fashion, just reflect on what happened when Jesus, the very image of God (Hebrews 1:3), showed up at the place where the Almighty made his name to dwell (Deuteronomy 12:11). First he made a whip. Then he made a scene.
Read More
Related Posts:

Were there doctrinal problems? More than you could shake a stick at. But there was also an unvarnished devotion to the two Great Commandments. And such love covers a multitude of catechetical misfires. The Bible Belt Christians who raised me could not always give you chapter and verse, but they were always ready with a cup of cold water. At the end of the day, it is the one who offers a cool drink that receives the prophet’s reward, not the one who remembers all the names of the prophets. 

There are almost as many churches as there are people in the small southern town where I live. You will scarcely meet a person who isn’t a member of one (or more) of them, though few have faithfully attended Sunday services since at least the Clinton administration. But even the local dope dealers and bootleggers can quote long passages from the Bible with scribal accuracy. While they may not, on the advice of counsel, admit to committing any crimes, they would be quick to confess many particular sins. And that is no small thing.
Some time ago, one leading evangelical influencer rejoiced over the decline of “Bible Belt Religion,” commenting that it “made bad people worse.” More recently, another Christian pundit took another swing at the cultural Christianity of the South, one of his favorite punching bags, calling it a form of “toxic religion” that is, at best, an expression of the Faith to be “survived.”

While I would agree with them that wholehearted, full-throated devotion to Jesus Christ would be preferable, I can’t find such dedication even among our Lord’s hand-picked Apostles or in a single congregation since the strange winds began blowing at Pentecost. These critics of the faith of my kin seem to be stricken by a virulent strain of perfectionism. Such perfectionism is little more than the Holiness doctrine of entire sanctification applied to culture, or at least to certain cultures. Hence, one of the problems with their disdain for the Bible Belt stems from an over-realized eschatology; a transformationalism that expects seeds to yield a hundred-fold overnight. Nevertheless, we are praying for lasting fruit, not Morning Glories.

One can imagine fewer complaints from the South if her critics held everyone over the fiery pit like one of Edwards’s unfortunate spiders, and did so with equal contempt. But there seems to be a bit of socio-theological dissonance at play. On the one hand, cultures that are overtly pagan, unbelieving, or outright anti-god are viewed through the starry eye of Pelagian optimism. While on the other hand, the imperfect religious expressions of the Bible Belt are met with the clenched fist of an Augustinianism gone to seed. The latter is denounced as utterly depraved with all of the fervor of a tent-revivalist, while the former are patted on the head like some tame race of noble savages.
Just so, barring a faulty eschatology or kind of theological schizophrenia, one is left to draw the conclusion that those who dislike “Bible Belt Religion” really just dislike the Bible Belt. But for my part, I thank God for the Bible Belt people who introduced me to Jesus.
Read More