Jesus Wants to Save the Christians

We're going to be discussing the book Jesus Wants to Save the Christians by Rob Bell each week in our small group. Here is what we will be talking about this week:

Introduction

As a result of the murder, the text says, “Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.”

East of Eden.

There is a place called Eden, a paradise, a state of being in which everything is in its right place. A realm where the favor and peace of God rest on everything.

And Cain is not there. He’s east of there.

And he’s not only east of Eden, but in chapter 4 of the book of Genesis, the text says that he was “building a city.”

It’s not just that he’s east of where he was created to live, but he’s actually settling there, building a city, putting down roots.

The writer, or writers, of Genesis keeps returning to this eastward metaphor, insisting that something has gone terribly wrong with humanity and that from the very beginning humans are moving in the wrong direction.

God asks Adam, “Where are you?”

And the answer is, of course, “East.”

East of where he’s supposed to be. East of how things are meant to be.

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We are east of Eden.

Something is not right.

The Germans have a word for this. They call it ursprache (oor-shprah-kah). Ursprache is the primal, original language of the human family. It’s the language of paradise that still echoes in the deepest recesses of our consciousness, telling us that things are out of whack deep in our bones, deep in the soul of humanity. Something about how we relate to one another has been lost. Something is not right with the world.


The Roman Empire, which put Jesus on an execution stake, insisted that it was bringing peace to the world through its massive military might, and anybody who didn’t see it this way just might be put on a cross. Emperor Caesar, who ruled the Roman Empire, was considered the “Son of God,” the “Prince of Peace,” and one of his propaganda slogans was “peace through victory.”

The insistence of the first Christians was that through the resurrected Jesus Christ, God has made peace with world. Not through weapons of war but through a naked, bleeding man hanging dead on an execution stake. A Roman execution stake. Another of Caesar’s favorite propaganda slogans was “Caesar is Lord.” The first Christians often said “Jesus is Lord.” For them, Jesus was another way, a better way, a way that made the world better through sacrificial love, not coercive violence.

A Christian should get very nervous when the flag and Bible start holding hands. This is not a romance we want to encourage.

And the ursprache continues to echo within each one of us, telling us that things aren’t right, that we’re up against something very old.

And very deep,

And very wide,

And very, very powerful.

For a growing number of people in our world, it appears that many Christians support some of the very things Jesus came to set people free from.