Episode 019 – How did you see Jesus as a Pentecostal? (God Part 2)

2 July 2021

Find this episode on your usual podcast player,  on YouTube, or listen here.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

 

T: Hey B. Welcome to Episode 19.

B: 19. It’s been a big week after our 18th last week, 18th’s are always big. 

T: Yeah, I had a big 18th. Had it at a night club in town, got hammered. 

B: Wow. 

T: In between the Revival Centres and Great Big AOG I had my 18th, lucky for me. Got shitfaced.

B: You did well, given that you were obviously backslidden at that time you would have partied hard.

T: Yeah it was awesome. So today we’re going to talk about Jesus. That’s our topic.

B: We are, we’re following on from the concept of God last week to Jesus. As we referred to last week in the episode, we spoke about Jesus being the personification of God, something that was very, very important in Pentecostalism, and still is, obviously.

T: So, before you came into the church, what was your view of Jesus? Who was he? What was he about?

B: Bloke on a cross. Died, had no idea why he died. Seemed really silly. I’d never read a Bible, I had no idea what that concept of Jesus was. It was pictures for me, pictures of this guy on the cross and that is it. Very, very limited view. How about yourself?

T: Well, for me it was more statues and things. I can remember being exposed to Catholic churches, you used to see the crucifix as they call it, so it’s the actual Jesus on the cross. Seeing this poor character, he’s always really skinny, had the beard, crown of thorns. I was exposed to the story, I guess because of the Easter story, of the fact that he had the living shit beaten out of him, he was really given a hard time, beaten up, thrown on the cross. I can remember Easter time there was always those Easter movies, and you used to get exposed to that. I can always remember seeing him getting a really good flogging. I’m not trying to diss anyone’s faith, but that’s really what it was. It was pretty horrific.

B: I don’t think I ever watched one of those movies, I wasn’t exposed to it. I don’t think I even would have known what the real Easter story was behind it. For me, it was about the bunny bringing me chocolate, and that was it. I didn’t have any exposure to that as a child. I think I’ve spoken about this before – mum would quite often, around Christmas and Easter, get a bit nostalgic and want to go to church. I had always said I’ll go with you, having no idea what it was, but we never went. Not once. But that was probably the limit of my exposure. I had absolutely no idea whatsoever. For me it was a swear word, it was a curse. 

T: Well see, I’m going to call you on that. What about Christmas? There’s this baby in a manger, there’s donkeys and cattle are lowing and baby awakes…

B: That’s a really good point actually, because yes, I did know about Jesus in the manger and lots of songs being sung. Obviously you’d have your Christmas pageants at school, you’d have your Christmas carol nights, so you’re right. I think the baby Jesus definitely – slight diversion, I was speaking with T about this before, do yourself a favour, Google Talladega Nights, baby Jesus praying. It’s one of the funniest scenes in a movie, Will Farrell’s character talking about how he can only pray to Baby Jesus. But I guess that concept of Jesus in a manger is probably the earliest exposure, but again, I didn’t know what that meant. From memory, I was never exposed to this baby would grow up and he would save you from your sins. It was just the story of this baby being born of a virgin. I remember that, because I remember sniggering as a child going hehe virgin.

T: I always remember singing Silent Night, and there’s that line which to me as a kid we would sing round young virgin because she’s pregnant, right? So she had this big fat tummy and I would sing as a kid (singing) Round young virgin. 

B: We had a girl I went to school with, her name was Joelle so when we would sing Noel, we would always get in trouble because our whole class would go (singing) Jo-elle, Jo-elle, and our teacher would get so pissed off. She’d be going EVERYONE STOP, EVERYONE STOP, and they’d send everyone out of the room. Everyone would come back in, sing a verse of Noel, and flip back to Joelle. Joelle loved it, because she was getting a bit of recognition.

T: I would imagine Noel, sitting at the back of the class, would have been going well thank God I dodged that bullet.

B: Very, very true!

T: I certainly didn’t think though that this baby Jesus, or the one getting the shit kicked out of him at Easter egg time – before joining the church I didn’t think in any way that this thing was God. It was the son of God, it was something special, 100%, but I was never led to believe that this was actually deity pre-existent, God incarnate – nup, none of it. 

B: No, same. I had absolutely no idea. For me that was a very difficult concept to grasp when I did start exploring the space a bit more.

T: When I joined the Revival Centre – I talked about this in the last episode – they certainly weren’t Trinitarians. Some of them might have been, it wasn’t a very well defined picture of God, but Lloyd Longfield who was the leader, we got him on tape once saying that Jesus wasn’t God, Jesus was the Son of God. Even though people have believed different things, the official party line inside the Revival Centre was that Jesus was not God. He was somewhat less, he was a step down. He was special, no doubt, and that he died and somehow did something for us, but really, ultimately the Revival Centre was about the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues. Jesus wasn’t really much of a big deal in the Revival Centre – when I came in there was more talk about God, more talk about the Holy Spirit, tongues, etc, and Jesus was this – yeah, okay, most of the New Testament is about the stories. When I think about it now, it’s actually mostly about him and we just sort of skipped over it and went oh hold on, where does he talk about the Holy Spirit?

B: Yeah, it’s interesting isn’t it. Jesus was absolutely central to Pentecostalism. There was obviously God and the Holy Spirit, but I think Jesus was spoken about a lot more. A lot of the songs they would sing in praise and worship were Jesus-centric. Would you agree?

T: Oh yeah definitely, and the theological term, my friend, is Christocentric. 

B: Oh sorry, I was trying to take it to the streets with my language.

T: Yeah fair enough, trying to reach out to the non-Pentecostal, burnt out crowd. But you’re right, totally. I got into Great Big AOG and all of a sudden there was this emphasis on Jesus, and it seemed right. Do you remember the street team? 

B: I do.

T: We’d go out with the street team leader.

B: Yes. Give me a J!

T: And we’d all go Jaay! Give me an E! Eeee! What does it spell? And we’d have to sit there for a minute – da tah tah da – JESUS!

B: I’m cringing thinking about it, but yes I was part of that. It was rather sad. Look, towards the end of the last episode you spoke about getting right with God, and how that was very repeated language – you’ve got to get right with God, you’ve got to be right with God. What was the way to get right with God? Well, it was through Jesus, was what we were taught, weren’t we. 

T: Yeah that’s right. You’ve gotta have faith in Jesus. You don’t have to do anything except believe.

B: Absolutely. He was the gateway through that grace that came.

T: He was the gateway drug to God. 

B: He was! But then he became the centre of my God concept, more and more as I progressed through Pentecostalism. The conceptual God faded away because I was able to identify with that personification, that Jesus who was not only the son of God, but he was also God.

T: Yeah that’s right. I used to visualise in my mind Jesus, and – same with you – as I got deeper and deeper into the Pentecostal scene, it became more and more about Jesus, and I started praying to Jesus more, and I started talking to Jesus more. Jesus was my friend. I would talk to him – maybe not quite the same as I’m talking to you now – it would be a little bit more intense, and a little bit more ominous, but I would still talk to Jesus. For example, driving into the carpark I would say Jesus, give me a carpark. Pretty much every time, he did. Forget that the town planner had actually set up enough carparks for me. I actually believed every time that my mate Jesus would give me a carpark. Forty thousand children starving to death a day, but Jesus gave me a carpark.

B: That’s obviously their own fault for not believing in Jesus.

T: Yeah. Well, he was my friend, and he gave me a carpark and something to eat.

B: Yes. He did, from the food court of the carpark.

T: But you know the death and resurrection, right. What was your understanding? When you were a Pentecostal, how did that all work?

B: Yeah, I’m not entirely sure I ever understood it, even after going to Bible College and studying. I didn’t really understand it, but the whole he died, he was sent to earth, he was God, he was like a piece of God that got sent to earth. The virgin birth obviously made him a lot more pure. He could be born of God, who had seeded Mary, and then he could grow up pure to take those sins on. He would be nailed to the cross, he would have the shit beaten out of him, as you said before, stuck in a tomb. He rises, and when he rises, he takes all the sin with him. I don’t know what that’s about. I have no idea – this is like a pact that God has made with us, that if I do this for you, all you gotta do is believe that I’ve done it and I’ll make it real for you. I remain confused about that. I was confused then – I was told just believe, have faith, which was always the answer if you couldn’t work something out. Just have faith! You don’t have to know everything, just have faith. How about you? What did it mean for you?

T: Well, yeah. I want to be cautious not to bring in any sort of cynicism or complexity from looking at it as a 50 something year old, but as a teenage fundamentalist or as a 20 something fundamentalist, I was led to believe that God needed a price to be paid for sin. That humanity had done all this shitty stuff, and for some reason – again, forgive my cynicism, but for some reason God needed the price to be paid. And the price that had to be paid was his own son to have the shit beaten out of him and then nailed to a cross, and then die. Now, the thing about it that I always wrestled with but I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, is that he died for our sins, so that we didn’t have to die, so that when we DID die, we’d go to heaven. So I didn’t get it – how is dying for me taking away my sins, when I’m going to die anyway? It didn’t quite add up. Now I’m not saying that just to be cynical now. Back then I used to sort of go oh hold on, he died for us so we don’t have to die, and then when I do die, but I thought I didn’t have to die – it didn’t add up.

B: And why did it have to be such a violent gateway? Crucifixion wasn’t just invented for Jesus. Crucifixion had been around for a long time, it was a way criminals were dealt with. Quite often not on a cross like we see which is the horizontal and vertical cross, quite often it was an X cross they were hung on, stretched out and killed. It was very violent. Why? Why did God choose that? Some of that just didn’t make sense to me. Why would you want to put a piece of you down on earth and then have it treated so violently, just so people could be forgiven and walk with you in some sort of relationship so they didn’t have to go to hell. I even look at it now and go why? You’re an all powerful God, why couldn’t you just go I’m going to extend my grace to all people, and away we go. I’m going to love them. 

T: Exactly right. The answer to that, that I used to see when we were in there was because in the Old Testament they used to sacrifice animals for sin. So Jesus came along as this ultimate sacrifice instead of these animal sacrifices, right. So the answer was oh because God demands blood, but you’re exactly right. Why does he demand blood? Does he have to demand blood? I mean, he’s God right, he makes the rules. Again, I wouldn’t have admitted any of this out loud, but even back then I used to see these contradictions, these issues and complexities and like you, just go ah yeah, don’t want to get it wrong about Jesus, because then you’re out, and if you’re out, you may as well have stayed in the Revival Centre.

B: That’s right, and I always remained confused around that and when I would, on the very rare occasions, speak to people about my faith, it was the question that would always come up. Why? Why would he do this? I don’t get it, it doesn’t even make sense. It doesn’t need to be done – he’s an all powerful God so why even do that. If Jesus is part of God, he’s doing it to himself and it’s really weird, and it doesn’t need to be done. But the person of Jesus, and a lot of the messages – even to this day I still appreciate some of those social justice messages, the ones that speak to the downtrodden, to looking after those within our community. I guess I was struck by that and what it actually meant, but also I think there was a bit of contradiction within the Christian circles because that generally wasn’t the tool that was used. There was a lot more judgement than actually looking after each other.

T: Well, I even saw back then that Jesus stood in this tradition of Jewish prophets. You know we had the major prophets and the minor prophets, and a lot of those prophets spoke out against social injustice. So Jesus turned up, and John the Baptist too, perhaps, and they stood in that lineage and started speaking out against religious persecution, or using religion to diminish people. But also spoke out against the Roman powers. We hear about the powers and principalities and often interpret that as spiritual stuff, but maybe that was actually talking about the literal ones and that the kingdom of God was going to overthrow that. I definitely saw Jesus as being a part of that as well, but I think that was more later. I think I matured to see that after I left Pentecostalism. There wasn’t a lot of talk about social justice, and even the way we would go out and work with people on the street, and street kids, it was still very much about trying to get them to confess Jesus as Lord, save you from hell, and Jesus was your ticket out of hell.

B: Yeah, you’re right and for me I think it was very similar. It probably wasn’t when I’d come out of Pentecostalism – it was when I started to explore more deeply and started thinking about leaving Pentecostalism that I really hooked onto that social justice Jesus, and it was something I really liked. I think it’s embedded in my life – not the fact that Jesus was a social justice flag flyer, but social justice has always been there and it’s something that has strengthened in the last 25 years of my life. I look back on some of those early messages and the importance of how I saw that. It’s a part of me, I can’t deny that.

T: What about the Jewishness of Jesus? Did you ever start to get influenced by that? I did. There was Jews for Jesus, there was a couple of shoots offs from Jews for Jesus. There was a whole thing in the 90s about the Jewishness of Jesus, and that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and the fulfilment of prophecy and all that. Did that ever fall in front of you?

B: Probably not in the early days. I didn’t think much about the context but certainly when I went to Bible College I thought a lot more about the Jewish Jesus, and particularly reading historians. There’s a historian who’s relatively famous called Josephus who documents a lot back then, so I guess a lot of those Jewish cultural influences were something that stood out from those writings.  Looking at those in context – but I just saw it as that’s the time this happened, so you have to look through the Jewish lens, but I never thought more deeply than that.

T: Remember Josh McDowell and these other apologists who would write these books? C S Lewis was another one, about arguing the historicity of Jesus, but I was quite convinced that he was a fulfilment of prophecy; that the Old Testament was basically largely – especially the writings of the prophets – was all about telling about this Messiah that was coming, and then Jesus fulfilled every single one of those prophecies to a T. I was convinced of that, that Jesus was definitely the Jewish Messiah, and there was no doubt he had met every single one of those. Of course now, without getting too much into what I think now, I’m not so convinced of that. But I was then.

B: It was that literal nature of anything that Jesus spoke within the bible, with truth, and it was a direction we should all follow.

T: The red letters, mate. You get the bibles with red letters.

B: I was just going to say that. There’s groups around now – I think Tony Campolo is one of the leaders of the Red Letter Christians, so I’m not quite sure exactly what they mean, or what they peg onto that, whether everything is about literal interpretation I’m not entirely sure, so I don’t pretend to know.

T: I imagine if it’s Tony Campolo it wouldn’t be so much about literal interpretation.

B: I wouldn’t think so, notwithstanding the fact that we have four quite different stories of what Jesus said within the gospels…

T: Remember that meme – I don’t know if you saw it – where it’s Jesus sitting there with the crowd and he says now pay very close attention! I don’t want four different versions of this.

(laughter)

B: That’s great, and you can see that on our page and Twitter account. It was a very good one. But that’s right, and those things, were again, explained away. You’ve just got to believe. They’re not contradicting themselves, nothing to see here, look the other way.

T: And then Christmas and Easter became very important to me as a Christian. We talked about what it looked like before I was a Christian – you know, getting the shit beaten out of him. Sorry, I just have to laugh, because you weren’t allowed to say that as a Christian were you, that Jesus had the shit beaten out of him – but he did. But Christmas and Easter became much more religious holidays. It wasn’t just presents and eggs. It was about death and resurrection, the virgin birth. I swallowed all that holus bolus. The stories, the harmonising of the stories – 100%.

B: And you weren’t encouraged to look a lot further, you were encouraged to listen to what the leaders were saying from the pulpit, and swallowing that. I don’t remember any specifics of challenging the different accounts in the gospels, but I know that that thinking was out there. It was four people writing stories, so of course there’s going to be a slight bit of difference! It’s fine, there’s no fundamental differences, of course!

T: Yeah, it was the liberals that used to say all that stuff, and we’re like oooh the liberals! There were books that you could buy from Keswick and Koorong, and Word Bookstore that would harmonise – really they do paint what is largely two very different pictures of Jesus. One is the book of John, the other is the synoptic gospels. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even notice it was there. I don’t think I read it enough anyway. 

B: Well I don’t think I read it in depth. I read the words, over and over. You have those challenges to read the bible in a year. I’m sure you did those, come on!

T: Nah not really. I certainly read the New Testament a number of times, but there’s bits in the Old Testament that I still to this day haven’t read.

B: Yeah, and you wonder why you’re not involved in the church anymore, don’t you.

T: Yeah that’s right, because I didn’t build myself up in the word, brother.

B: Imagine if you did! We wouldn’t be podcasting.

T: So I’m going to fire a question at you, then I’ll answer it after you. People are going to listen to this and go they didn’t really know Jesus. They didn’t really have a relationship with Jesus, they think they did, they knew about Jesus, but the reason why they’re doing what they’re doing now is because they never really knew him. So I’m going to ask you, yes or no, did you have a genuine relationship with Jesus?

B: I believe I did. Whether I did or not, I’m not entirely sure, but at the time I 100% believed I did, and I believed that I heard the voice of Jesus, I believed that when I prayed to Jesus he listened, he heard, when I asked for things, those things would be met. I firmly believed it. It’s that personal relationship with Jesus, and a personal relationship with God like we spoke about in the last episode – I talked about hearing the voice of God, and truly believing that I’d heard the voice of God. I truly believed that I heard the voice or the will of Jesus when I prayed to Jesus. The reality is it was probably all meshed in one, there probably wasn’t anything separating it, but that’s what I believed. I believed I heard and felt things – whether I see that now through a lens of intuition or knowing, a deeper connectedness with others, with community, with spirit, I don’t exactly know now, but I know back then I felt like it was a genuine personal relationship with Jesus. And that’s very important – a personal one. How about you T?

T: Oh undoubtedly. There is no doubt in my mind, and definitely I would say those around me would also testify that I had a genuine relationship with Jesus. In my mind, Jesus was there. In my mind when I prayed to him he was there, he would answer me – like you were saying, not necessarily with words, but with impressions, with intuitions etc, but I had a real sense of his presence as well. Definitely. As a matter of fact I feel a little bit annoyed when people say to me oh you knew ABOUT God but didn’t know him. No. In the Revival Centres, maybe? But in the AOG and in fact beyond that, stepping into Baptist, Church of Christ, even Anglican churches I went to, I had a genuine, deep relationship with this person I believed was real.

B: Yeah, look, I came across many people throughout my journey, some quite close to me, that would go to extremes with this relationship with Jesus. They would literally get up in the morning and go what should I wear today Jesus that would be the best witness for you? What would attract people to you through me? All that sort of stuff. So people were definitely convinced that relationship could lead to them hearing and experiencing things directly from Jesus.

T: Yeah, and remember it was I must become less so he may become more. That was the way we saw Jesus. But ultimately whether I understood it or not, I believed that something cosmic had happened; that Jesus had died for my sins, and he was resurrected. Interestingly, when I talk to some of my Christian friends now, and I’ll introduce them to certain thinkers, Christian theologians whether they’re liberal or progressive – which is sort of the same thing now, progressive is just another word for liberal that we used to use in the 90s – they will say do they believe in the resurrection? That’s a big thing for them. One friend of mine in particular went away and googled does XYZ person believe in the resurrection, and then came back to me. Wasn’t interested in what the person had to say, didn’t go off and read. None of that. Just needed to know do they believe in the resurrection? Yes, okay, great. They’re Christians. For them, you’ve got to believe in the literal bodily resurrection. I dunno man. It’s convoluted and complex, this whole Jesus thing. We’re not going to nail it in 30 minutes, are we. 

B: Is that a pun? Well done. Look, it is a complex one. We just want to emphasis once again that we’re not out to offend, we’re reflecting on and looking through the eyes of now, and going what did we believe back then? What did it mean then, what does it mean now? How do we interpret it? I think we’ve both come to the conclusion of I don’t know. I’ve got no idea. Do we believe in a literal resurrection? Well, for me, no, to be completely frank, stone me for that. Reality is I would never have said it back then, but I had doubts. But I had to believe it. That was the crux of the belief. If I didn’t believe that, everything else fell over.

T: Yeah, for sure. Look, I’m going to remain deeply in the closet as to where I stand with that. Do I believe in the resurrection? We are now at the end of Episode 19. Next week is going to be our Q&A and our reflection on our past episodes, and talk about what we’ve done, where we’ve come to, what other people have said to us, and some of the challenges we’ve got. We’ve asked people to put questions into the Facebook group, so we’re certainly going to answer those as well. Then we’re going to take a bit of a hiatus. We’re going to take some time off, recharge our batteries, and come back with Season 2. I think there’s a few more topics we need to cover about what we believed then, before we start to journey away. Before we start to tell our stories of leaving Pentecostalism, and even ultimately leaving Christianity. I’m really looking forward to that. I think it’s going to be heavy, but it’s going to be more important than the picture we’ve painted so far.

B: So next week we will do our Q&A. There’s a few questions in there, so we’re looking forward to talking about those, but I’m also looking forward to reflecting back. It’s been a big journey, a winding and weaving journey, and we have arrived at a place where we have one more episode in Season 1. Looking forward to that, looking forward to the reflection, looking forward to a little bit of a break. We don’t know how long it will be. Won’t be too long, just a bit of a break to reset and think about Season 2. Thanks again for listening people, and we shall see you next week.

T: Ciao everyone.