"Deep fried baby Jesus"

Well, now that I have your attention. This "title" came about last weekend when our friends, Heather and Amy were here. To set the mood, we had been together all weekend, had numerous alter universe experiences, and laughed a ton. This leads us to Sunday night and tired. Tired being the place where all good spiritual conversations get their start. As we were discussing different denominations, Heather said that she believes Oprah is the pastor of the largest church in America. I agreed and said that I believe Oprah's theology is a bit like the movie Runaway Bride. In the movie, Julia Robert's character always likes her eggs the same way that her boyfriend does. I said I think Oprah is like this with Jesus. She appears to have a varying relationship with him based on who she is talking with. Mix this conversation in with a little Taladagga Nights and you get "deep fried baby Jesus." All joking aside, I've rolled this around in my head a lot this week. As Christians we tend to conform Jesus to our ideas, rather then conforming our ideas to Jesus' standard. If I want to do something questionable today, say a sin, I scramble Jesus. I say He is confusing, contradictory and hard to understand. If I'm angry I throw Him into the pot and boil Him. I yell and scream and pretend that He told me this life would be easy, when He in fact, told me the opposite. Sometimes, we even dress Jesus up to look appealing. Very, very audacious of us. We sprinkle bread crumbs on emotions and throw Him into the grease when it's hot. We wait until people are tired and we talk about hell and grandma waiting for us in heaven and we guilt people into conversions, but not relationships. We start as spiritual babies and we are too content to allow others to stay this way. Or worse, we are more then content to never grow up ourselves. As a pastor's wife I have caught myself saying many times, "when we can all graduate from middle school, Christians will be effective." My egg list could go on and on. We poach Him, fry Him hard, and occasionally we serve Jesus over easy, so as not to offend anyone. Jesus is Jesus. He is Savior and Lord. He cannot be changed. Our descriptions hurt us, not Him. We expect lesser things from Jesus when we make Him anything but exalted in our lives. Jesus refers to us, the Church, as His bride. I think it is time we all stop running away.