The ‘Golden Calf’ called….Jesus!

 

…This concern seems to have merit, that the person of Jesus to have been largely co-modified, commercialized and idolized. He is no longer a ‘person’ but a product and ‘promotion’ one that must always ‘rise and rise’ above the drab level of dis-interest. This same Jesus, must always be bigger, brighter, bolder and better than a ‘reality’ that is largely unknown and unfamliar.This same Jesus must, in every facet of his life be romanticized, over spiritualized, he has been taken to the rarified air of rock stars, legends and myths, this is the Jesus that can only live and breath and have his being in a sort of hyper-reality. Women fall down in hushed tones weeping and shaken, men are left as defenders and protectors of a reality that is flawed, faulty, unreal, unattainable, unreachable and uninhabitable.Like all products, once the purchase is made, life goes on, untouched, unchanged, the only thing that remains, as with all products is;  to ‘wear it’ or ‘use it’ or ‘carry it’ and or ‘show it’. At all times there is a separation and detachment from this same image, and to counter act this, a codependency must follow.

What does this mean? It means that this is now MY Jesus and MY image and MY idol, touch this and you TOUCH me. becuase a ‘real connection’ is not possible, this same cycle must be repeated again and again. This same Jesus, through no fault of his own, continues to rise to the same unreality as that of a rock star or movie star, this very same image has little bearing on the truth, it is the image that is worshiped. For these same Christians, they have taken an image of Jesus, much like the Hebrew rebels and created a ‘golden calf’ and have fallen down to worship it, tragically, believing at the same time that this very same image was created by Jesus himself, the image has little bearing on reality. Truth is, the reality may in many cases, be too hard to reconcile with the image. Christians in the west are sometime worshipers of the ‘golden calf’ called Jesus. Eastern Christianity had a much more grounded much greater predisposition for reality than those from the West. We find a more honest Jesus on the path of ‘descent’ not on the road of ‘ascent’. The Jesus of the gospels is best found in the still places in the wilderness not in a consumer driven Westernized quest for ‘another’ expereince.