Progressive Christians might not like the Old Testament, or Paul, or the organized church, but they tend to love Jesus.
The trouble is, Jesus was a pretty judgmental dude. As any superficial reading of the gospels will reveal to you, Jesus talked about damnation and hell all the time. Here's Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount:
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.All that to say, if progressives want to align themselves with Jesus they have to do the work to enter into Jesus's moral universe.
But again, as I pointed out in the last post, this shouldn't be too hard for progressives. Still, you see a lot of progressives struggle with this "Jesus problem."
I think this is mainly because progressives tend to cast Jesus as a Zen, non-dualistic thinking, hippie, flower child than as a prophet standing within the Hebrew prophetic tradition.
Yes, Jesus welcomed tax-collectors, sinners and prostitutes, but his radical hospitality had a harsh, prophetic, and apocalyptic edge. Just ask the Pharisees.
In short, Jesus was a lover, but he was also an apocalyptic prophet of doom. And yes, it's hard to fit those pieces together. But if progressives want to lay claim to Jesus, they need to lay claim to the whole of him.
