Jesus is the best conceivable being possible. So any time someone changes Him in any way, they make him objectively worse. This obviously makes sense. If Jesus is 100% perfect, then any alteration would deviate Him downward. Now nothing else is truly perfect in this world but these are the closest – Dr. Pepper, Double Stuft Oreos, and the movie Gladiator. Imagine taking away four of the 23 flavors of Dr. Pepper? Or what if you dipped an Oreo in nacho cheese? Or swapped Russel Crow with Ryan Reynolds in Gladiator? Each of those changes would radically affect them and I’m sure your first reaction was that they were changed for the worse. But a creative and charismatic person could make an argument for each of those changes.
Did you know that Dr. Pepper is supposedly flavored with carrot, prunes, tomato, and black licorice. Wouldn’t Dr. Pepper be better without those? It makes sense right? Take out the parts you don’t like and it’ll be even better? No way. It’ll be off. Mr. Pibb is good but not as good. (The PhD makes all the difference I guess.) Dr. Thunder is pretty close, but when you’re at a party ALL the Dr. Peppers will be empty before someone cracks open the 2-liter of Dr. Thunder.
Everybody likes cheese right? Doesn’t cheese make everything better? Not desserts. Give me some cheese fondu and man there’s a lot of stuff I’ll dip in there. I can even eat a vegetable with the right cheese. But not an Oreo. Cheese is great. Oreos are great. But when you put them together it does NOT work.
I like Ryan Reynolds. He’s so funny, and it’s hard to be handsome, ripped, and funny. (I would know.) But he can’t play Maximus Decimus Meridius. He doesn’t have the gravitas to be the Commander of the Armies of the North or General of the Felix Legions. He doesn’t seem like a loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. He doesn’t have the depth to play the father to a murdered son or husband to a murdered wife. And I don’t think he’d even say the line, “I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” But would have broken the 4th wall and said something like, “Geez, I’m sorry that your sister is more into me than you, you perv.” You can’t just swap actors in perfect films – too much of the movie would change.
The same is with Jesus. You can’t just take away things you don’t like, add things He never did or said, or replace aspects of being without radically changing who He is… and ipso facto, make Him worse.
Let’s take a few examples:
Deity – You can’t make him any less divine and not radically change who He is. Jesus is Jehovah. Yeshua is Yahweh. Whenever you try to lessen his being that’s a major change. Some try to say, “He’s not God, He’s the Son of God.” That’s like me saying my son is not as human as I am. That’s ridiculous. My son is the same thing I am. Or as the early church put it, Jesus is homoousios or the “same substance as” the Father. You can’t make him more powerful. He’s already infinitely powerful. Any change you make weakens Him.
Fine with Sin – Whatever sin you want to commit you tend to argue that Jesus is ok with. He doesn’t specifically name any of the letters in LGBTQIA+ mostly because such terms didn’t exist yet. But such behaviors obviously did and thus when asked about sexual sins and divorce, Jesus quotes Genesis in Matthew 19:4-6, “‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” He doesn’t “condemn” anyone. He simply states the truth, and the actions God expects. Jesus didn’t come to condemn anyone. Everyone was already condemned. He came to save us from our sins (John 3:16-17).
Save Everyone – Him being “love” doesn’t mean everyone is going to heaven. The Bible certainly doesn’t teach that, and I don’t think we actually think that’s a good idea. That would mean nothing we do in this life matters. Murder, rape, lie, and deceive as much as you want if everyone goes to heaven anyway. I would guess most believe maybe the most extreme evildoers don’t go to heaven, but almost everyone believes they’ll be good enough to make it to heaven. They either don’t believe their actions are that sinful or believe their good outweighs their bad, but both are just made-up notions in their own heads and not based on any biblical reality. There might be times where I thought that if I were God, I would have done things differently. Gosh, there’s so much hubris to that. Anytime any of us think that we could design salvation better is crazy. God knows not only the future but all potentialities of all futures. Christ’s salvation is thus the best of all possibilities. To believe there’s a better way is to say that God is misinformed or weak or spiteful, despite declaring and displaying all to the contrary.
Well, there’s just a few examples. I could give a dozen more on every Christological or soteriological theology there is. I think the issue is we are far more consumed with our own thoughts, desires, ideas, and goals than we are concerning Christ’s being, plans, purposes, and will. We have created a controversy in our mind over who will rule us where there should be none. If Christ is who He says He is and does what He say He’ll do, our choice is to either argue with Him or follow Him. Which are you doing?
Joe Allotta 