Johnnie Moore
By Ashley Andrews, 700 Club Interactive
CBN.com –What does God look like? Would He be white collar, blue collar or no collar? Would He be a hipster or a hippie? Author, pastor, advisor, religion professor and a vice president of Liberty University Johnnie Moore says that God is a God with dirt under His fingernails. That is to say, Moore believes that God knows how to work - that He's eager to reach into the "mud and muck of humanity." And in his new book Dirty God: Jesus in the Trenches, Moore explains just why he believes that.
UNDERSTANDING GRACE
If Jesus were walking the earth today, where would you find Him? What would He look like? Who would His friends be? These are the questions that Moore considered while brainstorming his book. And in his research, he found that everyone has an opinion, but not everyone is right. See, Moore discovered that Christianity is different from every other belief, and it is all due to grace - God's grace. And this is where most people seem to get confused. "Grace," he shared, is a word we use to describe the means by which God allows people to overcome their differences and become close again, and Jesus demonstrated this grace by touching the leper...It's His grace that makes Jesus unique, and it was the implication of His grace that caused so many people to miss Him altogether."
People have always had their own idea of what God should be like. Before His crucifixion, they expected Him to be a soldier, a politician, an emperor. And now, after His resurrection, not much has changed. In fact, "When you think about it," he said, "the whole story is really absurd. God's are primarily thought of as 'powerful' - like Zeus with his lightning bolt. They don't waste their time meddling in the lives of humans. They're too busy being gods. And Jesus is all-powerful. Jesus can hold the universe, which He created, in the palm of His hand. Even so, Jesus comes to us totally different from any other God. He entered history as a God who looked more like man. Jesus didn't care about impressing the barons and their politicians. He didn't have time for the rabbis with their long prayers and outward adornments. Jesus came for everyone, and especially for those who didn't deserve God's attention. He came for the regular men and women who claw and fight their way through life, trying to make this world a little better place. He didn't come to judge the sin of the world but rather take onto His own shoulders the burden of giving a second chance to the people who didn't deserve one."
Jesus, Moore reaffirmed, is unlike anything we expect. And it is because He accepts us as we are. He is grace, and as Moore explained, "Some people have a problem with grace because it makes God seem weak to them. It humanizes Him. It doesn't exactly fit our image of the divine God sitting on His throne with a scepter and a gavel and a voice that thunders like dynamite. We like to think of God as far away from us - like a famous person we admire but don't really know. We kind of keep track of what's happening in His story, but surely He doesn't know much about ours, and if He does, He doesn't care to know anymore." So it is ultimately our perception of God that holds us back from His grace - "it causes us to miss the beauty of His grace." What's more, he pointed out, God gives us grace because He knows that is what we need. That's why, "The Jesus of the Bible is not one that is freshly showered, well-manicured and relaxing in air conditioning. To reach the people that needed the grace of God the most, the Savior, who was offering eternal cleanings of the soul, probably smelled of sweat and soil. Jesus was dirty because the people He came to save were a mess - not just physically, but personally, relationally and spiritually."
Of course, God could have sent a messenger or acted through a prophet. He is God, after all. But the point is that He didn't. "Jesus," Moore continued, "is the God who comes to us without fanfare. He seems weak when He arrives in that manger, but He's anything but weak. He's powerful enough to hold back His grace as He begins His journey wading through the muck of man's sin, and all the way to the cross, He demonstrates that the values of the kingdom of God are different from the values of the world, or of the Romans or the Pharisees or Herod himself." God took it upon Himself to reach out to us. "He dropped a staircase from Heaven so that He can walk with us, touch us, talk to us, feel like we feel, hurt like we hurt, struggle like we struggle, and eventually help us to get where we ought to be - in the presence of God again."
BY THE GRACE OF GOD
God's grace is for everyone. And lucky for us, He gives it freely, even with all of our flaws. We tend to think that Christianity is "for other people. Better people. Not us regular people. It's for people who are holier than we are, more devoted to God. It is one of the greatest barriers standing between our faith and those who are curious about it. So many people feel that even despite their best intentions a committed faith is just beyond them. They aren't disciple material." They aren't holy enough, strong enough, smart enough, etc. But Moore asserts, "Jesus comes to us and says, 'You're welcome into the Kingdom of God. Just trust me and follow me,' and you're in." And Scripture proves this.
"God's Story," he shared, "through history, is filled with people whom we would probably have passed over...the great heroes of Biblical history had plenty of issues. If they were living today, they would headline tabloids and star in reality shows. God has a track record of giving grace to rookie leaders - an approach that seems absurd when you consider that most of the great figures I've encountered in the other religions of the world have become famous by their perfection. The very reason that they are priests, saints or monks, is because they lived nearly flawless lives of pure devotion. Yet Jesus taught us that His Father was the kind of God who picked regular people and then used them in powerful ways despite their imperfections."
In the end, Jesus is completely and utterly unique. He is unlike any other god - He never runs out of grace. "He is a God who cares," Moore asserted. "He's not a God who is irritated by their continual requests for forgiveness or preoccupied with other things when He is needed the most. He is there. He is open to our cries, and he listens to us. He has grace for us. He doesn't simply tolerate our need for second and third chances; he doesn't begrudgingly make a way for our repentance. Instead, he takes pleasure in helping us 'turn our hearts back again.' He will move mountains and call down fire and trust us one more time, even when our track record would make any sensible person do the opposite. God is not skeptical. God believes in us, and grace His way of demonstrating it. God will not be defined by His anger toward us but rather by His kindness toward us. He's more kind than we ever imagined Him to be."
DIRTY HANDS LIKE CHRIST
Grace is not just a God-thing - it is meant to be received as well as given. Grace, Moore argues, should make people and the world a better place. "It's our responsibility as God's children to live as people of grace in a world that desperately needs what it doesn't always accept," says Moore. Moore reminds us that Jesus was kind and liberal with his grace to a world of people whom society believed were the least deserving of it. "The Bible teaches us that God came to us in Jesus to 'demonstrate his own love for us' (Romans 5:8)," Moore said. "He didn't expect us to climb up to him. He climbed down to us. He got his hands dirty so that we could have our hearts cleaned. And by that example, he taught us a great deal about God's character. By studying Jesus' life, we find hints about God's heart - and therefore we find hints about how we should go about living our own lives."
According to Moore, we live in a grace-starved world. "Our faith," he explained, "is a lived-out faith that demand the abundant distribution of love and grace to others. Jesus talked about this all the time. And, in fact, he talked of our acts of compassion as ways in which we worship God...He said that what we have done for one of the least of these has really been for Him...Our acts of compassion toward others are, in actuality, offerings of worship to God." And He is worthy of our worship. In fact, he mentioned, "He should be worshiped more."
As Christians, we are called to be servants. That is actually why we are saved. "Jesus saved us to serve, not to be served," Moore asserted. And Jesus is our example. "Jesus came to serve the world, even if it meant death...Grace is generous, but it isn't free. It will always cost you something when you decide to give - whether or not you receive anything in return." That means that we too will get dirty like God. There are plenty of people who need grace. And in a world of a billion Christians," Moore remarked, "there should never be a moment on the planet when hurting people feel orphaned by God. Jesus is asking us to join Him in the trenches." Will you join?