"Jesus is the can."

[velvetpage]

The service today was run by the teens and pre-teens of the church. One of them, an older boy, perhaps fifteen or sixteen, did the children's story.

He had his brother hold up an egg. "This egg is like us. We're humans, and we're sinful." The brother held up a hammer. "God says that the wages of sin is death. Death today is represented by the hammer. This is God's Hammer of Death." At this point, I'm having visions of D&D and St. Cuthbert, while most of the adults in the sanctuary are having visions of these two teens smashing an egg in the middle of church. "God's hammer is going to smash the egg," he said, and the brother raised the hammer.

Just before the brother started to swing it, the kid put a coffee can upside-down over the egg. The hammer dented it, but that was all. "Jesus is the can," he said, as the adults breathed a sigh of relief and I convulsed in silent mirth. "He protects us from God's wrath. See? The egg is perfectly safe." He lifted up the can.

The brother was just fast enough to catch the egg before it rolled off the table.

It was far and away the most effective children's story I've seen in a long time. But I'm having trouble getting the image of Jesus as a tin man, or worse, out of my head.

Comments

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

i don't know...i think that if someone was telling MY four year old child that she was an egg and god's "hammer of death" was going to strike her down, i'd be pretty pissed off, jesus-can or not. but maybe that's the not-christian part of me not really understanding this whole idea.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The hammer was God. So was the can.

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

still don't get it. or why it's a good lesson for kids. god will threaten to bash you over the head and at the last second throw something over you to stop him from hurting you....nope, not seeing the good.

[bandersnitch.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you just dont understand God.

With sin, he has to cast you aside. Hammer you all the way to hell. The can protects you from the Hammering you deserve.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Do you want me to explain it?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Well, the whole point of Christianity is that God is just enough to strike us down for our sin, and merciful enough to provide for its forgiveness. God is the hammer. He's also the can.

[neosis.livejournal.com]

The whole Jesus as sacrifice for our sins thing has never worked for me, it just doesn't make sense to me.

The lesson above, in particular, seems to be as moral as a wife-beater. The abuser says she deserves it, but his loving nature is what prevents him from beating her most of the time, even though she really deserves it.

Even if you take the metaphor to mean you are always shielded, then it is at least emotional abuse. "You deserve death, but in my graciousness I'm not going to kill you right now, as long as you do everything I tell you to do".

A lot of Christian dogma about God appears to be highly disfunctional from the outside. I mean, you could write a very thick scholarly tome on how codependent the Church is.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

And, "capable of great sin" means pretty much the same thing as "sinful," according to Protestant theology. For the Christian, Jesus is supposed to forgive us our sin, and then help us overcome our tendency toward sin so we can do those great deeds that we're ALSO capable of.

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

For some reason this makes me think of "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" but it could be the sickness that is starting to take over my body.

"They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God's using his power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" Luke 13:7. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's mere will, that holds it back." ~Jonathan Edwards~ July 8, 1741

There are many varying theological interpretations on God's justice and/or benevalence but I am no theologian, let a lone a Christian. It is more into the 19th and 20th Centuries that the concept of God becomes more warm and fuzzy.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It's definitely a blunt image, and not necessarily the one I want my daughter to have as her first image of God. But then, I just barely qualify as a Christian by most definitions.

The funny thing is, it didn't occur to me to be upset at the lesson until failstoexist pointed it out. This is not the central image of God that I grew up with, but it's among the images that I have, and it didn't really occur to me not to introduce that idea to my children.

[catarzyna.livejournal.com]

Does this change anything for you?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Nothing I wasn't already considering.

[paka.livejournal.com]

I have major major quibbles with this, but ya know, there's nothing I could say you haven't already thought of. Up to and including wanting to quote "Enlightenment can pierce even the helm of iron."