Jesus Unfiltered: Unmasking His Obvious Flaws

With All Due Respect to Everything I Was Ever Taught

I’d say this picture is flawless. The photo is the work of Ikowh Babayev: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-wearing-red-crew-neck-sweater-16622/

To claim Jesus wasn’t perfect might be heretical to my faith tradition, and probably all of Christianity. I understand this. I also understand where the doctrine of a perfect, sinless Jesus comes from. I’m not here to rehash the reason. (Here’s a link, if you need a refresher.)

Still…

It seems like we gloss over some of the parts of Jesus that don’t fit neatly into our doctrine. Usually, it’s the hard stuff. Like a rock that might break the beautiful stained-glass window at the front of the church.

Even more, I sometimes wonder if our propensity to gloss over the hard parts to keep the lustrous veneer does us a disservice, perhaps cheapening what might be a more useful story.

We’ve insisted Jesus was fully human. But then we don’t allow him to have part of what makes humans special - the ability to learn from our mistakes and failures, to find ways to correct those mistakes and failures and move through a growth period to the other side where we’re better people.

If Jesus was perfect, then wouldn’t we rob him of this part of his fully human quality?

As I was thinking about this post, I reached out to some people I trust when it comes to their understanding the theology I grew up with. I asked them if we believed Jesus was perfect. I was of the assumption that we did. So, I was surprised when I received this text:

Do we believe Jesus was sinless? Yes. Flawless? No.

I was surprised by that response. I’d always accepted the position that Jesus was perfect in every way.

The Bible offers evidence to the contrary.

It’s likely you’re already aware of the apocryphal book (read: not a book of the Bible) The Infancy Gospel of Thomas. This book is choc full of stories about Jesus as a little boy. If you read them, “perfect” certainly isn’t a word you’d use. I don’t know, but I think they way Jesus is portrayed is likely among the reasons the book wasn’t included in the canon we have today.

Even still, the one reference we have to Jesus as a boy hints towards an individual who was learning, which implies Jesus grew from one state of imperfection toward something better. Here’s the verse I’m talking about. It’s from the book of Luke.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men.

I apologize if the above quote is off. I typed it by memory. This was a verse which was drilled into our brains as children in my church. I can still hear us all reciting it in unison. We used our loudest indoor voices and almost shouted, “Loooooook TWOOO-FIFFFTY-TWOOO!” as we gave the reference at the end.

What exactly did Jesus increase from? Doesn’t that imply Jesus’s wisdom level was at some point… something less than what he increased to?

Then there’s this story in Matthew about an interaction Jesus had with a Canaanite woman. This story is particularly challenging to the claim that Jesus was without flaw. Even as an adult. You can find the story here, but I’ll paraphrase.

Our hero is walking from place to place throughout the land, accompanied by his disciples and throngs of people. One of these people, a woman, continues to cry out to Jesus for her daughter to be healed.

The problem is, this woman is a Canaanite woman, a sect of people with whom Jesus’s people — the Jews — didn’t associate. This wasn’t a small thing either. Their relationship was probably more akin to today’s state of affairs between Israel and Palestine than it is between fans of rival sports teams. What I mean is, the divide between Jesus’s people and the people of the woman crying at him (the Canaanites) was racial, cultural and religious. It was serious stuff.

Not only that, when it came to the Canaanites, it seemed like God’s son was a true chip off the ol’ block. Remember that time when God told Joshua to go into Jericho and slaughter every man, woman, and child, along with all their animals just for good measure? Jericho was a Canaanite town.

The bitterness ran deep.

So anyways…

Jesus’s disciples were annoyed by the Canaanite woman shouting towards Jesus and they requested he tell her to go away.

So, he did, making sure to explain he wasn’t there to help people like her.

She didn’t leave. She kept at it. So Jesus doubled-down.

He called her a dog. He didn’t mean as in, “a cute little puppy with spots, a wagging tail and floppy ears that just wants to kiss your face all day.” It was his way of saying, “Your people are not worthy of what I’m doing.”

But the woman pressed on, explaining that even dogs have some value. So what did Jesus do?

He changed his mind. He adjusted his religious values, scrapped his family tradition as he did, and provided what the woman requested.

As I grew up, I was taught Jesus was just testing this woman’s faith. The implication was that he was going to help her all along, but when she passed his little test, he used her as an illustration. But perhaps it wasn’t that simple. Maybe Jesus had real feelings about the Canaanites steeped in history and tradition. There’s an incredible amount of information to unpack in this story and the more I did, the less I could accept that Jesus was simply testing the woman.

Jesus believed his mission was to his own people. It was for one group of people with a certain worldview, not for a different group of people with different values. But then, when presented with someone who was urgently seeking Jesus, he moved the goalpost. He included someone whom he’d previously defined as out of bounds. (Or out of touch, for my European football fans.)

Then there’s the story of the Samaritan woman at the well. It’s not quite as harsh (and is presented by a different author of a different book) but has a similar ring to the story. A person from a group of people who are at odds with Jesus’s theologically correct group of people — Jesus’s mission target — are then included by Jesus.

But wait, there’s more…

How about the Roman Centurion, the guy whose very job it was to keep Israel in line, even to the point of exerting violence on them? Everything about the Romans was detestable in the eyes of Israel. From their occupation of Jerusalem to their sexual lifestyles. Ever wonder why the centurion was adamant that Jesus not come to his home? Maybe I’m reading a bit deeper than I should. But the fact remains…

…Jesus moved the goalpost again and included the Centurion in what he was doing.

Another formerly detestable people group; perhaps worst of them all. (At least the Samaritans and Canaanites were locals.) Jesus is all like, “Yeah. You seem to have faith in me. You’re in!” And apparently so was his servant boy, the actual recipient of Jesus’s miracle.

Without fail, each time I was taught about these stories I was told to be like the person who approached Jesus. Have faith like they had faith, and Jesus will be happy with you. Yeah, ok, I get it. But…

Aren’t we supposed to be like … Jesus?

Aren’t we disciples of Jesus? Isn’t he the one we look to for direction on how to live our life? Isn’t Jesus the one we’re supposed to look at and learn how to be?

The reason I was taught as a kid to memorize Luke “TWOOO-FIFFFFTYYYY-TWOOO” was in recognition that Jesus learned stuff and grew into better-ness.

Even racist Jesus. (Oops. How did that get in there?)

The guy who called the Canaanite woman a dog. He was challenged to be better and did so.

They guy who moved the goalpost to include Samaritans, a repeated example of who was important to him and worthy of what he had to offer.

The religious leader who saw the value in a Roman Centurion, a figure who was more of an outsider than either the Canaanites or the Samaritans. He tore down the fences to allow for him too.

We have multiple examples of times when Jesus was faced with people who were members of detestable out-groups. Then, when he saw they were earnestly seeking him, he made adjustments which allowed for inclusion. If Jesus could do this, well… then wouldn’t that be OK for me to do too? If that’s how Jesus’s increasing wisdom led him to act, then wouldn’t that be the expectation for someone trying to be like Jesus?

Indeed, what would Jesus do?

I know people who’ve dropped their belief in Jesus due to how he initially treated the Canaanite woman. I hope they don’t give up on me too. Because I’ve been guilty of the same kind of thing.

Theologians can tell you why it’s important that Jesus was sinless. That’s fine. Whatever. I get a popsicle headache trying to understand all the theological mumbo-jumbo we’ve been parsing for several millennia now.

But I need a flawed Jesus. I need the example of a person who once saw a group of people one way, recognized this error, and then changed his understanding and moved to include them in his world.

That’s the guy I want to be.