Understanding the teachings of the gospel I learned as a child, the gospel I’ve come across throughout my life, and the gospel I struggle to grasp now is a challenging prospect. The gospel as I was taught it as a child, and believed into my early adulthood, entailed the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as applied to our lives through obedience to Acts 2:38. Salvation, at least initially, required repentance, which was a change of mind and disposition toward my sin, that was often accompanied by sorrow, guilt, and tears. Sin was defined rather ambiguously as anything that “missed the mark.” The “mark” was God’s standard of living righteously, which would be defined and redefined throughout my life by the various preachers, denominations, and bible interpretations that I became enamored with on my journey. In addition to repentance, in my United Pentecostal Church, baptism by immersion in the name of Jesus was required. It was necessary for salvation, as was being filled with the Holy Ghost with the initial evidence of speaking in other tongues.
There was, of course, an elaborate bait and switch upon completion of these initial requirements. The switch involved an ever moving “goal post” of requirements involving how we dressed, how we behaved, who we had sex with and when, what we watched and heard, and in some cases whether we grew hair on our faces. Although the latter only applied to men, I think. But it also included in many cases how often we spoke in tongues after the initial experience, how often we prayed, the enthusiasm levels of our worship, the amount of Bible knowledge we could rattle off, the number of Bible studies we taught, how much we gave, volunteered or how long we were willing to go without food to have the elusive revival. This was the gospel, in our case, the poorly named “good news.” Our definitions were ever expanding to the point that pastors and the congregations they led would often have discussions about what was and wasn’t a “heaven or hell issue.” These discussions were considered theologically deep when they weren’t even wet.
Based upon our readings of the Bible, there was also ample talk about the blood of Jesus. If fact, it is interesting to think about how much of our practices and rhetoric centered on the more violent aspects of these ancient stories. We would sing about being washed in blood, weep over depictions of the crucifixion along with the analogous Old Testament blood drenched sacrificial lambs.
Additionally, we were taught to constantly “Plead the blood” which was a kind of magical incantation meant to ward off any lurking demonic spirits, bad luck, or the common cold, while providing protection when traveling or otherwise leaving the house. Speaking of which, there was also a lot of talk of pleading the blood in every room in our house. Complete with illustrations of Old Testament passages of painting blood on the doorpost of the house to gain protection from the death angel God directed to kill the first born of the Egyptians. There was also lots of talk about putting things “under the blood.”
Mostly, what we put under the blood was anything that was uncomfortable to talk about, especially the details of how some people lived before coming into the church. This phrase was especially popular in conversations that involved words or actions that hurt or harmed others. It was a way to avoid any personal responsibility for the work of relational reconciliation and restoration. Whenever anything difficult was brought up about the past, when someone said, “it’s under the blood” the conversation ended. The mixed metaphors of our theology were whiplash inducing. Consider that in the same sermon, we would hear variations on the theme, “You can’t sweep your sin under the rug!” But you can “hide it under the blood!” Wow, that will preach as they say.
It occurs to me that if we were talking, singing, and preaching about the blood of Jesus, that this was an acceptable embrace of violence and gore. But anytime we heard a sensational story of other blood sacrifices or heard of a horror movie depicting a beauty queen being doused in blood, or of a rock star spitting blood or theatrically biting off the head of a bat, this was intolerable. Context mattered I suppose. It is important to point out that this fascination with the blood of Jesus, isn’t limited to the eccentric practices of the church of my youth.
Roman Catholicism has long insisted that communion isn’t symbolic but is the actual consumption of the body and blood of Jesus. And most every Christian denomination as some sort of “penal substitutionary atonement” perspective on the inherit meaning and function of the death of Jesus. This is the idea that Jesus on the cross took for us the punishment we deserved (penal) and died in our place (substitute) to satisfy the requirements of a just and righteous God (atonement). There are accompanying systematic theologies and church traditions that support these understandings weaving passages from the Old and New Testaments into one unifying message that makes the message of the torture and death of Jesus a necessity to secure our salvation.
I don’t know about this. Maybe? Is this a conclusion that I would come to independent of how I’ve been conditioned to read the Bible and its stories? Or would I arrive at a different conclusion?
Scot Loyd 