This is the situation Barnabas and Paul found themselves in at Lystra (Acts 14:8-20). They had just preached about Jesus to the crowds and healed a man lame from birth. "When the "crowd" saw what Paul had done, they shouted in their local language, 'The gods have come down to us in human form!' Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. The priest of Zeus... and the "crowd" wanted to offer sacrifices to them."

Here is the "crowd" excited by effects of the healing power of Christ interpreting the evangelist/missionaries in terms of their native pagan religion. This is called "domesticating the Gospel" or fitting the Gospel to their own cultural beliefs. They jumped to the wrong conclusion. They saw the signs of God's power at work in the lives of these people and misinterpreted its source. The gods to them were gods of their own making, not the God revealed to us through the people of Israel and the coming of Jesus. But they thought they could fit this manifestation of God's power into their own world-view of human adulation and the worship of demi-gods. So it is in our own world where Christianity is misinterpreted in terms of popular values and we want to worship vague concepts of justice and compassion and domesticate Jesus to fit into our worldview.

Lesslie Newbigin tells the story of spending one evening a week in the monastery of the Ramakrishna Mission in the town in India where he lived, sitting on the floor with the monks and studying with them the Upanishads and the Gospels. In the great hall of the monastery, as in all the premises of the Ramakrishna Mission, there is a gallery of portraits of the great religious teachers of humankind. Among them is a portrait of Jesus. Each year on Christmas Day worship was offered before this picture. Jesus was honored, worshiped, as one of the many manifestations of deity in the course of human history. To him, as a foreign missionary, it was obvious that this was not a step toward the conversion of India. It was the cooption of Jesus into the Hindu worldview. Jesus had become just one figure in the endless cycle of karma and samsara, the wheel of being in which we are all caught us. He had been domesticated into the Hindu worldview.

"The view remained unchallenged. It was only slowly, through many experiences, that I began to see that something of this domestication had taken place in my own Christianity, that I, too, had been guilty of domesticating the Gospel." (Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Culture, p.3)

How do you avoid domesticating the Gospel and making Jesus just one among many of the gods come down to us in human form? When you see the bumper sticker: COEXIST, what does it cause you to think: that Jesus is just one among many manifestations of God's power? When you hear slogans of supreme contemporary values such as justice, peace, unity, toleration, compassion and what is right and fair, how are they to be interpreted? What are the facts and ultimate truths that give them substance? What are the gods we worship in our society? How is unconditional love described? What are the interests and intentions of those who propose that the Gospel fit into our superior modern experience?

What did Barnabas and Paul do? They rushed into the "crowd" that was misinterpreting what they were saying and doing and contradicted the prevailing narrative. "Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things, to the living God..." They characterized the local religion as worthless and preached to them the good news of the living God as revealed in creation and the salvation Jesus brought. They went against the "crowd". They criticized their religion as worthless, their ideas as wrong, and their actions as blasphemous. They contrasted the local conception of the gods with the living Creator and sustainer of all things who had not left himself without a witness in the things that he had made, in the seasons and regularity of nature, and the giver of all good things to fill their heart with joy.

Are we willing to contradict the prevailing narrative of our society with its obsession with addiction, sex, violence, materialism, and entertainment, rather than the breakdown of marriage and family, the healing of those who are sick, the plight of the mentally ill, and the need for the Gospel to transform lives, to bring about reconciliation and forgiveness? It is only the living God, the source of all life revealed to us in Jesus who did come down to us in human form to suffer and die for us on the Cross to bring us the new life of the Spirit and resurrection from the dead, who can save us.

The "crowd" however was not persuaded. Others came and won them over to their point of view. Terrorists came from Antioch and Iconium and recruited the "crowd" to stone Paul. "They dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead. But after the disciples had gathered around him, he got up and went back into the city." Yes, there were some disciples there who had chosen for Christ. One might have been Timothy. He got up and went back into the city! They were a minority but they were courageous and committed to follow Jesus.

Why would you want to follow Jesus in a world of competing religions and ideologies? Why would you want to be committed to follow Jesus? Lesslie Newbigin states:

"Truth is not a doctrine or a worldview or even a religious experience; it is certainly not to be found by repeating abstract nouns like justice and love; it is the man Jesus Christ in whom God was reconciling the world. The truth is personal, concrete, historical." (op.cit. p.170).

If you have any doubts or hesitations in following Jesus I challenge you to read the Gospel of John. What do you do with the real historical person, the Word who became flesh, the One and Only, full of grace and truth? The God-Man who says, "I am the bread of life...., I am the light of the world...., I am the gate for the sheep...., I am the good shepherd...., I am the resurrection and the life...., I am the way, the truth and the life....,I am the true vine...." Who do you follow: the crowd or Jesus?

(Ted's blog is to be found at www.tedschroder.com)