Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
16: Dr. David McDonald Addresses Why Jesus Had To Die
254 Plays4 years ago
With Easter approaching, one of the hardest questions we have to ask ourselves is why did Jesus have to die? Laura Fleetwood invited Dr. David McDonald on the podcast to ask him this hard question and get his perspective.
David is a pastor, teacher, and lecturer in colleges and seminaries all over the world. His work with Westwinds Community Church has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. David was appointed to the first-ever post-doctoral fellowship at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, and continues to integrate spiritual truth with sharp social analysis in his private work as a speculative theologian. In 2019, David founded the Fossores Chapter House, the world's first headquarters for Christian ministerial innovation, where preachers, leaders, and entrepreneurs gather from all over the world to do their best work.
Highlights from the episode include:
- David’s personal and professional study of Jesus and what he continues to learn about Him
- Jesus as a carpenter, handyman, and general contractor
- Our different experiences and impressions of Jesus
- Jesus’ Ministry
- The “temple tantrum”
- The exposure of politics and religion in Jesus’ death
- Atonement Theology
- What if He lived for another 50 years?
- His story and Spirit is still living on through each one of us
Normal Goes A Long Way Website: https://www.normalgoesalongway.com/
Normal Goes A Long Way Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/normalgoesalongway/
Normal Goes A Long Way Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Normal-Goes-A-Long-Way-110089491250735
Normal Goes A Long Way is brought to you by Messiah St. Charles: https://messiahstcharles.org/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members-only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
00:00:24
Speaker
Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith.
Jill Devine's Faith Journey
00:00:28
Speaker
The Normal Goes Along Way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
Dr. David McDonald: Introduction and Background
00:00:41
Speaker
Hey friends, this is Laura Fleetwood here, and today on the Normal Goes It Along Way podcast, we have Dr. David McDonald. I'm super excited to introduce you guys to David. He is a preacher, teacher, and lecturer in colleges and seminaries all over the world. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine.
00:01:04
Speaker
David was the first ever postdoctoral fellowship at Portland Seminary, and he continues to integrate spiritual truth with sharp social analysis as the founder of the Phisaurus Chapter House training center where he trains creative pastors.
How Does David McDonald View Jesus?
00:01:24
Speaker
David, welcome to the podcast. Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me.
00:01:28
Speaker
We are so excited for you to be here, and we're diving into a deep question today. Before we get started talking about why did Jesus have to die, I wanted to start with a more personal question for you, and that is, who is Jesus to you? You know, you are a theologian. You are very intelligent, and you probably spend a lot of
00:01:57
Speaker
intellectual time studying Jesus. But who is Jesus to you in your life? Yeah, you know, the more the more I think about Jesus, the more inspired and impressed I am about what kind of person he was. I mean, I grew up in church, my dad was a pastor, I've been a pastor for a long time. And
00:02:19
Speaker
And so you have this Christian perspective on Jesus, this church perspective on Jesus, that he's God and he's God's son and he's God made flesh and he does these miracles and he has all these followers. And you kind of get the sort of like the sports center highlights of who Jesus is. But over time, as I continue to study and investigate Jesus and really tell the stories of Jesus to people, colloquially in conversation, I begin to remember the sayings of Jesus and in my own life sort of
00:02:47
Speaker
those things in times of difficulty, I realized that this guy was amazing, just amazing. Setting all theology aside, Jesus is the most inspiring man to have ever lived.
00:02:59
Speaker
And I think about what he did with Judaism, I mean, not only, you know, turning Judaism in some sense on its head, but all of his teachings are colloquial paraphrases of Old Testament Judaism. So he took this existing body of material, I mean, all these arguments, all these thoughts, and then he found ways to make them really simple, really poignant, really sticky, so that people like with no education, people who were from a different religious background, people who had no religious background at all, all those people could get the very best
00:03:29
Speaker
of Jewish teaching in a way that made sense to them. And as somebody who tries to do that now with Christian spirituality, that's really hard. It's really hard to take what I think of as top shelf ideas that you got to get out your little ladder and climb all the way up to get these big old dusty books, take those top shelf ideas
00:03:46
Speaker
and make them simple and plain, put them at a more accessible vernacular for people. That's brutal. And Jesus does it with such ease and such charm. He's quite funny too. I mean, I always imagine he's got a little twinkle in his eye and he's kind of got a wink and a nudge in a lot of his interactions. And he can, he's a lightning rod. Like he got super ticked off a bunch of times. So this sort of churchy idea of Jesus as
00:04:13
Speaker
like a big blanket, Jesus as a great hugger, Jesus as a human teddy bear. Like that's not a fair portrayal of Jesus at all. This is a first century Middle Eastern tradesmen. We've never met any people who are tradesmen. They're not.
00:04:27
Speaker
like tender, I mean, they can be, but that's not their normal demeanor.
Impressions and Interpretations of Jesus
00:04:30
Speaker
If they get into arguments with people about how things should be done, which Jesus often did, well, tradesmen can be volatile, forceful and aggressive. And so, you know, reading Jesus as a carpenter, as a tradesman, a tecton was the real word, you know, means craftsman or artisan or stoneworker or something like that. But reading him through that lens is like,
00:04:53
Speaker
You know, a handyman, a general contractor, really puts this sort of aggression into a lot of his exchanges. So you got this guy who's hyper aware of religious tradition, who's hyper masculine, who's aggressive, who's assertive, but also really funny and really tender. And he's all these things simultaneously. I mean, these really contradictory extremes. He's all of those things smashed into one person. And God says, be like this. This is a guy who's got it right.
00:05:22
Speaker
follow him. And the more I study him, the more I go, yeah, holy crap. That's exactly who I want to be. And I'm not doing great. But the more I know Jesus, the better I am and the happier I am and more fulfilled as a person. So to me, Jesus, he's my hero. Absolutely. And the more I know him, the more heroic he becomes. Oh, I love that. I love just the picture that you painted in my mind.
00:05:49
Speaker
because I think we all have a different picture of Jesus. And isn't that interesting? Like we're all reading the same scripture. We know we do hear different teachings and things like that. And yet I bet that each one of us has a different version in our head.
00:06:08
Speaker
of what Jesus was like. So thank you for sharing yours. Well, think about it like if it's okay to just tease that out a little bit. I mean, think about it from the perspective of a parent. You know, I got two kids. My son is 18. He's a bodybuilder studying to be an engineer. My daughter's 15. She's a volleyball player and a CrossFit champion. And they both have really different impressions of me. Like last night as a family, we went out for dinner, had hamburgers, and we went bowling.
00:06:38
Speaker
horse around, watch some TV. And I had little conversations with my daughter, little conversations with my son.
00:06:44
Speaker
conversations with my wife, conversations with all four of us. And when I talk to them today, they both have very different impressions of like what kind of mood I was in, what the little jokes meant to them and sort of what category of joking that was, you know, like my son thinks of me more as a buddy and as a peer right now, because he's stronger than me and bigger than me and now he's sort of feeling himself in his adult life. But my daughter still thinks of me as quite this towering figure
00:07:12
Speaker
And when i joke around with them you know my daughter thinks i'm full of mischief and my son thinks all my humor is like bro humor from the locker room and they both have very different impressions of last night than my wife who just thought i was relaxed and happy and enjoying my family and my new life and so i don't think she remembered i made any jokes.
00:07:32
Speaker
So it's just in that one little window, you get evidentiary support for what you just said, that of course we're all going to have different experiences of Jesus and different impressions of Jesus. Because even if we spent all the same time with him, at best, we'd end up with our own version of the gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, they've got very different impressions of Jesus with, of course, some crossover. But I think that's appropriate. We all should have kind of our own, I think the word is relationship with Jesus.
00:08:03
Speaker
So it's interesting, why then do Christians try to make their version of Jesus the only version?
Holy Week and Jesus' Role in Divine Plan
00:08:12
Speaker
That's a question that I wrestle with a lot too. There's space. Jesus is large enough. He is full enough. He is holy enough for him to be what each individual person
00:08:30
Speaker
needs at a certain moment in their life. Yeah, Philip Yancey wrote that great book, The Jesus I Never Knew, came out, gosh, maybe 30 years ago or something. But that was a really helpful book for me in making space for other people's impressions of Jesus. And of course, not everybody does that. Not everybody has a version of Jesus that they want to cram down your throat or protect. But it does make sense to me that those who are hostile and defensive, it makes sense to me why.
00:08:57
Speaker
Because their experience of Jesus, their understanding of Jesus, Jesus himself in them is so precious. And so if somebody is going to change the character of my daughter and get it wrong, I'm going to be frustrated by that.
00:09:14
Speaker
I'm going to be offended by that. If somebody said something about my daughter that's the exact opposite of what I know to be true, and they're telling everyone my daughter is like this when she's really like that, I'm going to tell them to shut up. That's my daughter. And so you think about how important and how meaningful Jesus is to us when somebody else gets it other, gets it different. And of course, when we're immature and when we're young in the faith, we think, well, maybe they just plan on getting it wrong.
00:09:44
Speaker
if we're dogmatic or whatever. So that's scary and hurtful. So of course people overreact. All right, well, here's where we are. We're talking about Holy Week. And I think most people know the general story, right? Jesus comes to
00:10:04
Speaker
Jerusalem. He's welcomed there on Palm Sunday. And then things take a turn and go dark. And the Jewish authorities are against him. The Roman authorities are against him. One of his best friends betrays him and turns him over to be tried, which ultimately results in his crucifixion.
00:10:31
Speaker
That's the short holy week story, but there's a much longer something going on here that God sets in motion way back in the garden, right? When he knew that he was going to have to provide another way to mend this relationship between humans and the divine. That relationship was broken.
00:10:57
Speaker
and there was a separation that occurred. And God being the loving God that he is wanted to restore that. And as Christians, we believe that Jesus was the way to that restoration.
Why Did Jesus Have to Die?
00:11:11
Speaker
From your perspective and all of the knowledge and experience that you have, help us understand why Jesus had to die. He could have done so much more good
00:11:26
Speaker
in the world. He only had three years, really, of ministry, which is so small. And he had to die in the most, and not just die, but in the most horrific, what would have been shameful way back then. Crucifixion was shaming. They didn't just want to kill him. They wanted to make sure that his legacy did not go on.
00:11:56
Speaker
I think that have to happen, David. Great question. Really common question. But I want to beg the question a little bit too. Because when we say, why did Jesus have to die? Well, the truth is he was a human. I mean, yeah, we believe that he was God made flesh. But Paul tells us in Philippians that Jesus set aside his divine privileges and he became a person.
00:12:24
Speaker
So people have to die. Everybody's got to die. Everybody. So Jesus had to die somehow. Now, maybe he could have died in his 80s in bed with a wife and grandkids. Maybe he could have died as some sort of amazing and well-celebrated poet. But no, I don't think that was ever on the table. Because Jesus, when I go back and look at the story of Jesus' life, he grew up poor.
00:12:54
Speaker
He grew up in a sort of a backwards town. I mean, Nazareth was a really sort of small town, very, very small town, only probably maybe 30 or 40 families that would have lived there. So really tiny community. We guess at most it was maybe 250 people. And in Nazareth, Jesus' family had some shame associated with his birth.
00:13:18
Speaker
Remember back then, nobody believed the story of the virgin birth. That was nonsense to them. They just thought that Jesus' mom had been sleeping around. He was his bastard-born son of a woman in a religiously conservative town. That would have been a hard place to grow up. One of the Jesus' father died early because he was unmarried.
00:13:43
Speaker
And it was really weird for somebody, for a Jewish male in the first century to be wifeless and childless. I mean, that's absolutely unheard of. It was the father's responsibility to provide a wife for his son to arrange that marriage. And Jesus didn't have one. We know that his dad was around when he was 12, but sometime before his public ministry, his dad vanishes. So he's got some personal heartache, some personal shame, some personal poverty. He grows up in a kind of a crummy town.
00:14:12
Speaker
And then when Jesus sort of has his coming out party, he's immediately met with some resistance by the powers that be of institutional Judaism and sort of the religious fundamentalists. And if you go back and you look over the course of Jesus ministry, he never backs away from a fight, like ever, ever. If he knows that he's going to say something that makes somebody mad, he doesn't avoid saying it.
00:14:39
Speaker
He says it cleverly, oftentimes will pose it as a question, but he lays these little rhetorical traps for his opponents. And he's consistently poking holes in the established ideologies, frameworks, and conceptions of his betters. Now, when you start doing that, they're not going to be real impressed with you. I mean, multiple times they tried to kill Jesus before they were ever successful. So, so already, you know, Jesus isn't going to go quietly.
00:15:08
Speaker
My key's not gonna play nice and go along to get along. Why did Jesus have to die? Well...
00:15:15
Speaker
He was picking fights, and he was picking fights often. And he was picking fights with really powerful people who had a lot to lose, who felt like their power was threatened and being exposed. And it wasn't just Jewish authorities, it was also Roman authorities. Jesus had a lot of interactions with Roman soldiers, centurions. He was something of a hero, even, to Pontius Pilate's wife, who was really struck by him.
00:15:43
Speaker
There are people in Herod's court, the people we call the Herodians, the Hasmonean Empire, the people that were going back and forth between Rome and Israel. And so there were all these powerful people who were placed in threat by Jesus. So why did Jesus have to die? Well, if you live like that for too long, somebody's going to take you out. Look at JFK, look at Martin Luther King Jr. I mean, Jesus was agitating
00:16:12
Speaker
the wrong people. And if it's hard for us to see that, never forget his famous temple tantrum. I mean, going into the temple and flipping over tables is a very, very, very public and angry protest saying, in essence, everything about our religion is corrupt. So of course they were going to kill him, of course. But I think there's even like a sense in which it was important that he died that way for us.
00:16:41
Speaker
Because Jesus' death at the hands of the Romans exposes the frailty of politics and government. I mean, the government felt threatened by this homeless preacher. What does the government do with this homeless preacher who has broken no laws? They kill him. So every time we get the idea that the right government is somehow going to protect us,
00:17:07
Speaker
We should just remember that once upon a time the only perfect man to have ever lived was publicly executed by his government. That's the limit of political power. Politics gets it wrong. But it's not just politics. Religion gets it wrong too.
00:17:26
Speaker
You had this whole religious institution, all these great scholars, these great preachers, these great learners and decision makers. And there were great ones, Gamalayo for one. I mean, these people who recognize that, well, that Jesus is a problem. And so what do these righteous religious leaders do with the one
00:17:49
Speaker
perfect man, the man who really understands what God intends for all people and for creation and for the relationships, going back, what does religion do to somebody who gets it right? Well, religion kills him, castigates him, besmirches his opinion publicly. So every time we get excited about our religion or every time we get our, you know, really excited about Christianity or, you know, the faith, we should be cautious.
00:18:17
Speaker
Because our allegiance isn't to a religion or our allegiance is to the one who exposes the limits of religion. So politics and religion both are exposed in the death of Jesus. And I think that was part of God's plan. Um, and we can tease that out too. I mean, there's limits to relationship. A lot of us try and find our identity and our friends, but look what Jesus friends did. You know, Judas, a close friend betrays him, Peter, a close friend betrays him and abandons him.
00:18:44
Speaker
But John Mark, one of Jesus' close friends, runs away naked when Jesus is being arrested. I mean, like, this is ridiculous. They all loved him. It was the women who stayed. Yeah, the women stayed. The women stayed. So there's just a lot that gets exposed in the death of Jesus Christ that I think is important for us to understand. Like none of those things can offer
00:19:10
Speaker
real hope and reconciliation. None of those things have real power. Not our tribal culture, not our ethnic identity, not our popularity with the crowds, not our friendship. Ultimately, all of those things are going to be exposed as fractured and frail and unstable. So why did Jesus have to die? I think he had to die that way or chose to die that way.
Understanding Atonement and Salvation
00:19:39
Speaker
to expose the limits of all these false gods. Through his death, we are miraculously saved. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the even bigger mystery, is that his death and resurrection, and I have a question about that too, but his death and resurrection, through that, he like takes our place.
00:20:07
Speaker
And so all the wrongs that we do that he never did, he paid the ultimate sacrifice for that. Yeah, Paul in Second Corinthians is this really cool line where he says, God made the one man without sin to become sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. I just like that, that he who knew no sin became sin for us.
00:20:35
Speaker
That's such a beautiful, beautiful idea that I'm corrupted somehow and he's not. So he takes my corruption away and replaces it with a kind of purity. And that's really beautiful, I think. My question about that is,
00:20:56
Speaker
Maybe you don't know the answer, but these are just the weird things I think about. When we say we're saved when we believe in faith in Jesus Christ, were we saved by his death or were we saved by his resurrection or both?
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah, in the Bible, the question you're asking is answered by what we call an atonement theology. Atonement is a word you can you can figure out what it means by breaking it up into the smaller component words. Atonement is at one month. So how we become at one with God and theology is just a fancy name for
00:21:37
Speaker
how you're gonna string together a bunch of ideas across a bunch of verses and have it make sense at the end. So in the Bible, there are 87 different atonement theologies, meaning there's a bunch of different ways to talk about how we're saved. A bunch, a bunch, a bunch, a bunch, a bunch, a bunch. Say that number again, 87? 87, yeah. Larry Shelton was a scholar in Oregon. He retired several years ago, but he published a book outlining sort of the basics of each of the 87 that he was able to identify.
00:22:07
Speaker
I probably only know like eight, ten, but the point is, there's a bunch of different ways to talk about it. A bunch of different ways to talk about it. And however you split the hairs, all of those different ways, I think, arrive at the same place. That through Jesus, we're reconciled to God. Now, was it through Jesus' death?
00:22:33
Speaker
It depends on what you mean by that. Like, is there some sort of metaphysical calculus by which a bunch of angels are in heaven, are trying to work the math to figure out if you're a Christian yet, and if you'll go to heaven? That's probably not quite how it works. But I like to think of it this way. I mean, for some people, the story of Jesus' brutal betrayal, murder, and execution, that's how they come to faith.
00:23:01
Speaker
They go, Oh my gosh, that was awful. And he did that. And he did that as a, as a demonstration of God's love for the world. Yeah. Then that I want to follow him. I am now a follower of Jesus because of his death. I think in that way. Yeah. We're saved through his death. Or at least that person is because, because that was, it was that portion of his story that was so compelling to them. Others might sit there and go, Oh my gosh, wait a minute. You're telling me this guy died.
00:23:27
Speaker
And then several days later, he wasn't dead anymore, that we've got all these eyewitness accounts, which is the most compelling evidence you can have in a non-technological society. And these eyewitness accounts are ratified over decades by hundreds and then thousands of people. And there's compelling evidence scientifically and sociologically that that evidence holds. You tell me that there was that kind of miracle.
00:23:51
Speaker
then yeah, I'm in, I'm in. If that's what God can do, if God is a resurrection God, a God who has power over death, then yeah, I'm following that God. So in the life of that person, then it's really the resurrection by which they're saved, because it's that portion of the story that's so compelling to them.
00:24:08
Speaker
But from a 30,000 foot perspective, I don't know that it really matters whether we're quote unquote saved through his death and or saved through his resurrection. The thing that matters is, am I now at one with Christ Jesus? Am I now at one with God? Am I reconciled? With all that I am, have I given myself?
00:24:32
Speaker
to the Creator and have evidence that the Holy Spirit is working in
Continuity of Jesus' Mission
00:24:38
Speaker
my life. And I think that's really how salvation works, big picture, regardless of how we articulate it. Well, it's about time for us to wrap up and bring Jill on for the next episode. She's been taking notes about all of this. But when you think about this topic, is there anything else that you want to add that we did not cover? You've given me a lot to think about.
00:25:02
Speaker
Well, yeah, thank you. That's very kind of you. Yeah, I think the one unexplored aspect today, and of course it took a long time to get into it, but before Jesus has his final showdown with the powers that be, he gathers his disciples and he tells them, it's good for you that I go. I think Christianity spread so fast through the ancient world.
00:25:29
Speaker
because Jesus was executed at the height of his popularity. And he had these followers, you know, the 12 and their families and the group of women and, you know, Mary Martha Lazarus, and then the 72. And he had all these followers, you know, a couple hundred followers. And he had told them that they would be filled with the Holy Spirit and that they would have everything they needed to do even more than he could. And when he showed up after the resurrection,
00:25:56
Speaker
and then shot up into heaven on a cloud at the Ascension. And then they went and prayed and waited for the spirit on the day of Pentecost. And then they were filled with this remarkable surge of power and authority and boldness. I think that's also why he had to die like that in that timeline. I don't know if those people, like if Jesus lived another 50 years, maybe all the disciples would become complacent and relied too heavily on
00:26:26
Speaker
standing right next to him. Maybe it would have been cumbersome for Jesus to have had three or five thousand people shadowing his footsteps all the way across the Galilean countryside. I mean, just think of the food supply shortage and there's no place for everybody to stay. I mean, it would have been socioeconomic upheaval. And so maybe it was good that Jesus died and left then so that we could pick up where he left off.
00:26:53
Speaker
And I think a good place for us to end is to just put this thought in the listener's mind that the same spirit that was given to his immediate followers is the same spirit that he gives us today.
David McDonald's Ministry Promotion
00:27:08
Speaker
His story is still living on through us. And as his spirit works in the world, and that is just an extraordinary, extraordinary thing to think about. Yeah.
00:27:24
Speaker
All right. Well, thank you so much. This was fun. I enjoyed getting to talk to you again. It's been a long time. I would encourage our listeners to check out David's ministry, which is the Phasaurus chapter house in Jackson, Michigan. Um, you can go to phasaurus chapter house.com F O S S O R S chapter house.com and learn all about the ways that he is just blessing
00:27:53
Speaker
pastors, making a safe haven for pastors to go and explore their creative ideas, their dreams to get filled up so that they can go back into the areas where they minister filled. And that is such a needed resource. So we wish you all the blessings, David, on that ministry
00:28:16
Speaker
And we look forward to talking to you again in the next episode where Jill Devine just joins us and asks her follow-up questions.
00:28:26
Speaker
the people are getting screwed, left, right, and center. And Jesus goes, enough, enough. This is grotesque. And he flips over the tables. And honestly, if you're poor, that's exactly the Jesus you're hoping for. He's like on your side. Yeah. Because he knows what it's like to be poor. He knows what it's like to be exploited. He knows what it's like to have the people who have power and control, use that power and control to dominate and humiliate you. And he goes, as God's
00:28:50
Speaker
Let's get this perfectly clear right now. Grace is free and God is here and you're not doing that anymore.