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Yes, the Felt Jesus is almost the quintessential symbol of Sunday School.
An old classmate of mine (a friend from both college and divinity school who now works in religious publishing), once quipped to me that part of the problem with Christianity today is that too many people still believe in the Felt Jesus.
He’s right.
You see, the Felt Jesus is the Jesus we present to children who are concrete thinkers and lack the cognitive ability to think abstractly. The stories of our faith are told in their most basic form, with plenty of blending, cleaning up, condensing, and washing over. Abstract concepts are necessarily given way to concrete images. God is “up” in heaven, and often imagined as an elderly, bearded father on a throne. Adam and Eve talked to the animals. Noah’s ark fit two of every species of land animal (fish were clearly exempt). Moses glowed with sunburn from God’s radiance. David slew a nine-foot giant. The risen Jesus ascended “up” there. And so on.
The problem is that many people have become adults, but still believe in the Felt Jesus—their faith hasn’t matured with them, advanced or grown.
When I hear atheists and agnostics question faith by describing the unreasonableness of God or Jesus or the bible, I often find that I perfectly agree with them. I don’t believe in “that” version of God either. And you guessed it…they describe a Felt version of faith.
Some will protest, “Didn’t Jesus say that unless you have the faith of a child you won’t go to heaven?”
No, Jesus didn’t say that. Felt Jesus did. What Jesus actually said was in response to his disciples asking about who was the greatest in heaven. Jesus put a child in the midst of them (as a form of sermon illustration) and said:
“Amen! I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom” (Matt 18v3-4).
Jesus isn’t for a second talking about what to believe, but how to be—humble like a child. The parallels in Mark 10 and Luke 18 talk about receiving the kingdom like a child. Again, there is nothing about the ‘content’ of faith.
However, the early evangelist Paul did write:
“Do not be children in your thinking…but in thinking be adults” (1 Cor 14v20).
Our faith must mature as we mature. Literal or fundamentalist readings of scripture, denying science and reason by literalizing myth and symbol and parable, and using the bible as a weapon against people who don’t meet a literal model of ritual purity—these are all symptoms of adults believing in Felt Jesus.
It is difficult to let go and believe in the real Jesus—a radical rabbi from the backwaters of Galilee in whom we encounter God’s vision for humanity. You have to let go of easy answers, black-and-white interpretations, and reading out of context. You have to embrace critical reading, intricate scholarship, paradoxes, and questions without answers. It is not easy to let go of Felt Jesus and embrace someone who is unattractive, abrasive, and radical.
Paul writes:
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (1 Cor 13v11)
Our Sunday School classes will always teach a version of Felt Jesus out of necessity—children cannot think abstractly. The problem is when those children grow up but their faith doesn’t mature at all. I believe it’s time that the church challenges our people to grow up—to deny the Felt Jesus and embrace the difficult and demanding Jesus who calls us to repair the world.
Is it worth it? You bet it is!