“You know Jake, you probably shouldn’t say some of the things you do.”
I laughed. My friend scowled. Her statement actually broke several minutes of silence as we rode our bikes around the neighborhood. The words had no prompting whatsoever, which meant that she had been thinking about it for a while and was waiting for me to say something relatively sarcastic and open the door to her lecture. I appreciated it and frankly was anticipating this type of conversation because she’s one of those Christians.
What does that mean?
There are all kinds of Christians. I’m going to stereotype them and place them in a list, mostly for fun.
Types of Jesus-people:
(Ahead of time, just know that it’s mostly, sort of entirely acceptable to be any of these)
1- Holy Jesus, People! With the exception of the whole hair issue, these humans live like modern day Nazarites and even know what that means. They want to be set apart for the Lord and expect all other Jesus-people to be the same. They openly condemn Donald Miller, beer, any movies that aren’t Veggie Tales and are still pissed off that Marilyn Manson is still alive (He’s so ten years ago…) By the way, being set apart doesn’t mean never leaving the church building….
2- Justice Jesus People: These humans know about every instance of genocide that has happened in the last 100 years. They wear Toms because they’re stoked that a pair got sent to some shoeless child in Uganda. They drink free-trade coffee and audibly criticize Starbucks because apparently, they’re not as honest about the places they buy their coffee as we’d like to imagine. I just can’t believe the fat, naked, green, fish-lady on the paper cups would lie to us like that.
3-Marley Jesus People: My favorite Christians have dreads and may or may not make their own clothing. You won’t find many of these people in skinny jeans or with giant, brightly colored high-top shoes, either. They might share some ideals with the Justice people but then again, they also may have some commonalities with Rastafarians. I’ve been told that kind of activity improves spiritual experiences and since I wasn’t a Jesus person when I was smoking that crap, I couldn’t tell you.
4- Tucked in T-shirt Christians: These humans would rather not be called Jesus-people because that’s just weird. They love their favorite Christian Nascar drivers (it seems there are plenty of these, too). Mullets were a hit with these people, but have disappeared since Jeff Foxworthy outgrew his. Mustaches were also popular and they’re excited to see more young men growing them these days, they just wish they wouldn’t dress so weird.
5- Stoic Jesus People: God doesn’t emote, why should you? Well, unless it’s anger. Any display of spiritual or religiously-induced emotion is a sign of cult activity and they’ll let you know about it too. God is more truth than He is love, so you’d better get it right during this lifetime so that you don’t end up living in a van down by the river of God when you get to Heaven. Nobody wants that.
6- Emo Jesus People: Wanna feel awkward? Sit next to one of these humans and when they start crying during your church’s video announcements, slide away carefully. If they make eye contact with you during this time, you can never speak with them again. They also throw their arms up during worship, fall to their knees dramatically like the people in those “Wow: Jesus Music” commercials and hang out for a long time to talk to the pastor about it after service.
7- Sunday Jesus People: They’re not reading their Bible or taking notes on their phone during service, they’re texting that guy or girl they met last night. They might show up to church hung over, but they gave God part of their weekend, didn’t they? Repentance is so much easier when you have a headache motivating you.
8- There are plenty more and I’d rather offend everyone rather than just a few groups of Jesus people…
Which one are you?
I’m an angry mix of a few of these 😉
PS- extra points if you can name the movie I quoted in the pic….
Was it Life of Brian? It seems like a Monty Python-ish type of quote.
Nope, it’s was made by pixar, pretty recently:)
You have to read Imaginary Jesus. Search it on Amazon. Amazing book about the fake Jesuses we follow and believe are real. Your list of the different types of Christians reminded me of that book. Jesuses like: The Testosterone Jesus – who is all about being a real man, killing things, playing football and being a man’s man, or the Liberal Social Justice Jesus – who is all about serving others but never shares about Christ, or the Conservative Jesus who is all about speaking the “truth” at the cost of serving.
You would love that book. Get it. Now. Or the evil monkeys are coming after you.
I might have to do that. Evil monkeys? I’m not scared, I’ve dealt with those off and on for years now. 🙂
I’m a mix of marley and emo. LoL
You are missing some kind of loud evangelic type. You know the type right?
9- Loud Evangelical Jesus Person: Think they know everything about God and your life and remind you of it every day. Super trendy and think small ministries are failures. Inform the world over the twitter, facebook and via text every single time they lead someone to Jesus because it’s important that we all know about their success in serving Jesus.
Mandy, how’d I do?
Brilliant. Simply Brilliant.
THANKS D!! I’ve had this written for days. Was expecting to catch hell for it…almost didn’t publish…. we’ll see 🙂
LoL perfect
stop talking about me like I’m not here…oh I’m sorry, I read the word “loud” and just assumed I was the topic of this conversation.
You’re totally one of those people. Just kidding. You seem less and less foreign now that I’m working with people who really aren’t from this country 😉
HA! It’s funny cause it’s true.
Pray at-the-drop-of-anything Jesus people. Their solution to anything is “let’s pray.” They often need other type Christians to keep them focused on doing the works that “put feet to their prayers.” on the plus side, you know that if they’re part of your group, someone is praying.
I’m that person at work. It’s actually really funny because you’ll hear, “Oh Jesus” and it trails off as I walk away from a situation to beg Him to make it work. It’s grand 🙂
it’s funny, but the reason i wrote about that one is because that’s where i walk in most of my Christian experience – praying.
My boss reminds me “Get the job done, and don’t stop to pray with people.” and then, when someone comes in and asks for me to pray for them, he call me to the front to pray.” First is policy, second is practice 🙂
I love it! I’m definitely the one that Jenn Lee mentioned, but I’m also a little more of the stoic type too. If people try to get me too hyped up about anything, I’m immediately questioning their motives 🙂
So true! And I do the same, only in Burmese – “Oh puh-ya-tha-kin”
is that cussing at someone? I kinda hope so!
You funny, Jake. I think you left out an emerging breed of Jesus people, the “Sarcastic Jesus People” that seem to be professors in the course of Analysis of Christian Culture 101.
I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and say “Saved” for the movie quote????
Jenn, are you telling me something? 🙂 You’re right about Jesus-people becoming self-pronounced experts on Christian culture. and not Saved, I won’t watch that movie. 🙂 Hope I didn’t bug you too bad!
Course not:) Just trying out the whole sarcasm thing. It’s a lot easier to type, I’m too much of a coward in person.
That was the most effective stepping on of toes I’ve seen! That was great! I think there could even be some blood inside my shoes. I’ll look later… The best part of all of it is that we all have some tendencies of the flesh. I think it’s great to bring them out into the open so that we can have a good laugh at ourselves then set about to change them or allow God to I should say. Isn’t that the problem in the first place? Trying to be God like in our flesh?
I’m considering dread locks, what do you think?
What about the Christians that pretty much think there is a demon behind every bush? There are a few people at my church that blame everything on the devil. “I couldn’t find my keys and I was late to work. I need to cast the demons out of my house.”
Brilliant. I forgot about that human. I love them, but how do you think they’d respond if they actually found a demon? They’d be scared out of their mind, right?
That was brilliant. Thank you for the laugh and introspection.
Thanks man! I didn’t expect a great response from a lot of people, maybe I jus run in a super-conservative circle of people though….
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