Was Jesus Polarizing?

Was Jesus a polarizing figure?

My church will do a worship series on polarization during Lent.  Wish us luck!  People are already asking me, “Are you really going to ask me to interact with others whose views are so off course that they would become violent?”  That response is incredibly telling of the dynamics at play within our society—that people automatically go to the extreme without seeing the rest.  The goal of this series is to investigate whether the life of Jesus teaches us anything about polarization.

I’ve been doing some scriptural research.  And I got to tell you: it’s been a tough day. 

You know when you are reading a novel and you prescribe a personality, tone of voice, and temperament to a character?  It’s almost like you can hear their voice in your head as you are reading dialogue.  The author of the story, of course, plants all the seeds through their character development, but ultimately the reader’s own lens gives the character life.  (This is why people are sometimes disappointed in movies based on books or vice-a-versa—the characters aren’t what they imagined.)

We do this with the Bible, and especially Jesus.  As we grow up, we learn about Jesus from our Sunday School teachers and we give him a personality: kind, tender, gentle.  And then we start to read the Bible ourselves—like really read it—and for many of us, we are surprised. Wait, this Jesus isn’t the same one I heard about in Sunday School [the movie version].  This book version is different! 

I had this experience.  Through my adulthood (and actual reading), I started to hear Jesus’ voice as that of a civil rights leader who wasn’t afraid to ruffle feathers.  He’d call people out.  He called people names.  He used big, dramatic language.  He encouraged people to follow his movement, and threatened them of the consequences if they didn’t.  He was a deeply respected prophet with a big following, but certainly not one who cared about validating the feelings of everyone. 

So to this question of whether Jesus was a polarizing figure?  Hmmm.  Well, was Martin Luther King Jr. polarizing?  Is Gloria Steinem?  William Barber?  Was Paul Wellstone? 

It really depends on how you define polarization.  I’m going to do the corny thing and go the dictionary.  From our good friend Merriam Webster, polarization is defined as “division into two sharply distinct opposites, especially a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes.”  Did Jesus do that?  Sharply divide people along opinions, beliefs, and interests?

Jesus’ ideals were anything but polarizing.  Include the Samaritan!  Include the gentile!  Include the Canaanite! Include the least and the lost!  Include the outsider!  Include.  Include.  Include. 

Yet if we want to get real about the Bible and how Jesus is presented, we have to recognize that he did draw distinct lines.  It was the people who were excluding others that Jesus himself left on the outside.  Jesus was trying to start a movement, and it worked.  He wasn’t trying to make everyone happy, find common ground, or meet in the middle.  Here’s just a few examples:

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Matthew 12:30 - Jesus' words, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."

Matthew 3:12 - John the Baptist talking about Jesus, "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Matthew 12:33-34 - “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is known by its fruit. Offspring of vipers! How are you able to say anything good, since you are evil?”

Matthew 21:43-44 - Jesus speaking the Pharisees, “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces its fruits. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”

John 18:5-7 - Jesus drawing the distinction between those who get it and those that don’t.  Jesus answered, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all be born from above.’

Luke 14:23-24 - In a parable about the friends turning down invitations to a banquet, the host brings in the poor, weak, crippled instead, leaving out those who were originally invited. “Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. I tell you, not one of those who were invited will get a taste of my banquet.’”

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So is Jesus a polarizing figure?  I’m. not. sure.  Did he draw lines?  He did, but the lines were about letting new people in and excluding the people who left others out.  Did he “other” the other?  I think when it came to people he disagreed with, he actually did.   

Like with a lot of things, it all depends on your vantage point.  If you asked the marginalized and oppressed if Jesus was polarizing, they likely would say, “Definitely not, he breaks down the boundaries and walls. He brings us together.”  If you asked the wealthy and powerful, they would say, “Definitely yes.  He is drawing lines and demonizing us.”  Polarization seems to be in the eye of the beholder.