This morning we looked at the most popular author residing on Christian bookstore shelves, the handsome, polished, smiling and totally spineless Gilderoy Lockhart. Lockhart writes under many different names and on myriad topics. But one topic, or rather one person, is seldom if ever mentioned in Lockhart’s works. It would take a great deal of effort to find this character in most Christian books. If he is mentioned, it is often as a minor character who supports the major one—in this case, Gilderoy Lockhart.
Who is this mysterious missing character, and does he even really need to be in these books at all? Well, he apparently doesn’t need to be in order to sell books. Lockhart’s sales are through the roof without featuring this person. Occasionally this character is held up as an example for what we need to do in order to be successful, but we only see him for this short time.
This person is not cool, and of course we only want to hang with cool people so we will look cool ourselves. That’s why we read Gilderoy Lockhart’s books in the first place. After all, he is cool, and we want him to teach us to be cool. So any uncool people can just sit this one out.
Who is this uncool person who is not in these books?
Jesus.
Really. Don’t believe me? Make your way to your nearest Christian supermarket and pick up five bestsellers at random. Flip through the opening pages until you see the author mention Jesus. Can’t stomach even going to such places? Then read this excerpt from Craig Groeschel’s latest, Soul Detox. It’s featured in this month’s Christianity Today. Read through to the end or you’ll miss this juicy morsel:
If we’re not careful, if we allow bitterness to take root in our lives, then we might miss God’s grace in our lives.
Really? It’s up to us to believe and behave correctly in order to receive God’s grace? Do you see what happens when Jesus doesn’t show up in these pages?
Let’s face it—Jesus is not a big seller. In our been-there-done-that society, Jesus is so out-of-date. We want flash, and Jesus ain’t flash. We want purpose and joy and hugs. We want an easy way to know God’s will, and then the ability to do the least amount of work to fulfill his will while still reaping blessings. (For some reason, Gilderoy Lockhart always makes it seem to be harvest time, but never soil cultivation or seed planting time.) Yet there are other reasons why I think Jesus is seldom mentioned in today’s Christian books. Here are my three—you may see others.
Gilderoy Lockhart is offended by Jesus. Well, of course he is. Jesus is offensive. He means to be. I mean, why else would he tell us that to be his disciples we would have to eat his flesh and drink his blood? Or hate our families? Is it not offensive to tell someone to sell everything they’ve worked for all of their life and give the proceeds to beggars and homeless people who wouldn’t know hard work if it dressed in pink? He wouldn’t even let a man bury his father. Talk about offensive.
If Jesus does appear on Lockhart’s pages, it is “Jesus meek and mild,” a nice, kindly shepherd who says “there, there” a lot. Mark Galli turned this picture of Jesus on its head in his book Jesus Mean And Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God. What? You haven’t read Galli’s book? What do you mean it’s not to be found in Christian bookstores? Oh yeah … Galli talks about the real Jesus who offends. Sorry, Mark, people don’t buy books that tell of Jesus offending and upturning their lives like the moneychangers’ tables.
Yet Jesus does offend. He did not come to bring peace but a sword. Jesus is not some happy jade statue passing out blessings to those who deserve them. Jesus does not play nice and breaks rules with regularity. If you are not offended by Jesus, then I question if you know the real Jesus. And the real Jesus just doesn’t fit with readers’ expectations today.
Gilderoy Lockhart does not know how to present Jesus. He doesn’t make mention of an offensive Jesus, for that would turn away readers. If he does mention Jesus, it is a tame Jesus, a Jesus we can negotiate with, a Jesus who does not judge or ever make us feel uncomfortable about ourselves. This is the only kind of Jesus Lockhart knows, so it’s not unreasonable that this is the only Jesus we will ever see in his books. But it takes talent and skill to paint a false picture of someone and make it sound believable. And Lockhart is not that skilled, nor does he want to work that hard, so he just doesn’t present Jesus to us at all.
What do you do with the real Jesus who, in setting a man free from demonic possession, utterly ruins another man’s business by allowing the demons to inhabit a herd of swine who then go running off a cliff? What do you do with a Jesus who seems to have no regard for servants (imagine those who had to take a pitcher of filthy hand-washing water to their master and ask him to taste it) or homeowners (“Hey, glad your buddy can walk and all, but what about this hole in my roof?”). Gilderoy tries his best to put Jesus in a box labeled “principles,” but Jesus never really taught principles. He showed his disciples that God was so much “other” than they had ever thought. Just when they thought they had Jesus figured out, darn if he didn’t go and totally change things around again. Can you blame Lockhart for not knowing how to present someone like Jesus in the pages of a book? So why not play it safe and talk about Gilderoy’s favorite subject—Gilderoy Lockhart—instead?
Gilderoy Lockhart does not know Jesus. There, I said it. Look, judgment is not in my job description, and I am very glad for that. So I am not judging anyone here. I’m saying that I wonder if some, perhaps many, of the authors featured in Christian bookstores today really know Jesus. I mean, if they know Jesus, why aren’t they talking about him? If they leave him off of the pages of their stories, is he really in their soul as the Storyteller?
C.S. Lewis, when he began to write The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe, did not set out to tell the story of Christ through the great lion Aslan. He simply wanted to to write a children’s tale about a land where animals talked. But as he wrote, said Lewis, the lion forced his way onto the pages. Could that have happened if the lion had not already forced his way into Lewis’s heart? And could Lewis have written such a great presentation of the Gospel if the lion were not already present in his life?
So many books in Christian stores today are devoid of any accounting of the real Jesus. Is that because the authors don’t know him? Is it because, worse still, Jesus doesn’t know the authors?
I’d like to start a call to bring Jesus back to the pages of Christian books, but I think it is too late. Blogs such as this and others have taken over that task. Publishers, authors and bookstore owners are afraid to release Jesus on readers, so you get Magical Me by Gilderoy Lockhart instead. One day this group will awaken and realize all of their readers have given up on such tripe and are reading and talking with one another in an internet monastery. But then they will quickly find another smiling face to put on the cover of a book that doesn’t mention Jesus and sells tens of thousands of copies.
Meanwhile, we will continue to lift up Jesus here as he knows himself to be. But be careful—we never know where he is going to go next. After all, he is not a tame lion.
The Internet Monk Archives 
“If we’re not careful, if we allow bitterness to take root in our lives, then we might miss God’s grace in our lives.
Really? It’s up to us to believe and behave correctly in order to receive God’s grace? Do you see what happens when Jesus doesn’t show up in these pages?”
I haven’t read the book or article you are refering to here, but when I read the quote from it, I didn’t see what you saw. I just saw someone saying that if we’re not careful and we allow biterness to take root in our lives we might not recognize the grace of God…Not that we wouldn’t receive God’s grace or that He would withdraw His grace because we didn’t believe or behave correctly.
I find that to be true in my life. God’s grace is a constant regardless of my belief or behavior (praise God). But I often don’t recognize it or enjoy it because I am too busy being bitter or critical about something….part of the human condition I think and fortunately covered by His Grace :).
I know I am late to the party here and I may be missing what you are saying, but for what it’s worth that is what came to mind as I read this piece.
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So does Mark Galli actually explain how Jesus’s offensive behavior is actually righteous? I have heard this “Jesus isn’t nice!” stuff before, and it basically made me struggle with hating him because he seemed to be cruel and devoid of sympathy for others. Basically, I would have all these instances of his hard-sayings and offensive actions swirling around in my head, and I would either suppress them until I exploded (because good Christians aren’t supposed to feel that way about Jesus) or they would eventually find answers that these youth leaders should have given to us in the first place instead of just trying to fiddle with our emotions. It wasn’t until sites like Christian Thinktank that helped me think through this stuff that I even was able to begin to see that Jesus was acting out of love and concern for the people he challenged. I agree that Jesus doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of morality, but it’s just as harmful to present him as some kind of shock jock that did things just to be “radical”, aloof and unconcerned with those who weren’t radical enough for him. Isn’t this just pandering to another audience (radical dissaffected people who think Jesus is “cool” in a marginalized anti-establishment kind of way)? What would be a lot more helpful would be to show the radical nature of Christ and then present us with the cultural context to help us understand why the perfect Son of God would ask a man to not bury his dad (my youth leader in college just left me with the “yeah it’s harsh, but that’s just the way it is.” basically leaving me with nothing but a harsh bitter aftertaste of the Savior I’m supposed to entrust my life with).
I suppose the missing ingredient in all my struggles was the deep conviction that Jesus was God and not just a prophet. If he was just a teacher, it would be insane of him to demand the things that he did. I wish there would be more of an emphasis on his divinity or kingship during conversations like this. Actually, that brings me to another question: were people supposed to know that Jesus was king or the Son of God? If his messiahship was a secret, then how were they expected to obey the commands that he made on their lives without the fear of committing idolatry?
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I wouldn’t say Jesus is at all excluded from the Christian book scene, but that there is variety. Wheat and chaff, and one can’t judge a book by its cover.
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I have a fantasy. It is a fantasy of owning a leather bound, large print NIV Bible with center column references. Such a thing does not appear to exist. It does exist in other translations, but not NIV. For some stupid reason I went into the Christian book store to see if they might have this mythical publication. The first thing I noticed is that they’ve almost completely squeezed the NIV off their shelves. When I asked about it they said, “Don’t you think the new NIV is a little liberal?” I told them I think it is head and shoulders the best modern translation that has come out in my life time.
So, then after I finished pestering the staff about this non existant edition of the Bible, I asked them if they had any of NT Wrights Bible for Everyone Bible Study. The girl says, “Oh we don’t carry that, but we have Max Lucado (and someone else I don’t remember).” I told her I do not drink out of the toilet, and I also don’t read Max Lucado.
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Jeff – Even though I don’t necessarily agree with Ken, he did offer his criticism in a fair and winsome way. You come across as defensive in your response. It takes some amount of gumption(even online) to disagree with the majority opinion. In his critique Ken seems to be trying to “build up” and not “tear down” and we should all be able to show some appreciation for that.
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I look at the Christian superstores as hawking something a little more than secularism while their marketing people have concluded grace would be too much. What I see lining the shelves there is a sort of safe in-between that is never quite one or the other. They “know” Jesus, but call it ambivalence. Yes, the Gilderoy Lockhearts are featured, but what is the target audience? The Dursleys of the evangelical world. They are selling Muggle religion.
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Fantastic insight!
There’s a difference in most people’s psychology in hearing, say, “You can have a good life,” from a faceless comment box, a prosperous person in real life, and a person in a wheelchair. When I (in my power wheelchair) say it, it’s obvious I don’t also mean, “and the road will be lined with tulips and fluffy bunnies”. Coming from me, that means that a hard life can still be a good one. But there’s a non-verbal communication section there.
Chap Mike puts flesh in the game, and that fills in part of the picture for me, too.
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You know, when Chaplain Mike posted the other week about hitting the wall, I read it and looked at my own life and shook my head. And I’m not trying to brown-nose at all. But when I’ve thought about how much he writes here, and how much he ministers as a chaplain, it’s occurred to me that he’s not exactly throwing darts at legalists from flow’ry beds of ease. Same thing with Michael Spencer: the man preached grace all the time, and worked his tail off for those kids, sacrificed comfort, learned humility the hard way, etc.
These men have come to us preaching grace and preaching about resting in Christ, and they turn around and work. If that’s the result of grace, God knows I could use a lot more of it.
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You know you’re on the right track when folks start to say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, dude. Gotta go easy with that Gospel stuff, you know.”
Gilderoy Lockhart must go.
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When it comes to living in grace, which is walking by the spirit, the great fallacy is that we do whatever the hell we want and everything is easy street. Nothing is further from the truth. It means dying daily, embracing the darkness that is part of that death and finding ressurection and wholeness. We are still slaves but now to the law of the rushing fountain of life that flows out of our being. 1 Cor. 7:22 “..Likewise, he who is called while free is Christ’s slave.”. And Heb. 9:14 “how much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to SERVE the Living God.”. Only the carnal minded see grace as an opportunity for the flesh. When you walk in the Spirit it is impossible to sin so the whole concept of opportunity is foreign. Still we sin but that is when we lose touch and commune with the old Adam. So what is left to do but return to the spirit of eternal life and continue in grace. Embrace life and grace. Be grace. Exude grace. Hear grace. Grace is Christ. It is not a concept, principle or tenet that is understood and incorporated into a systematic construct of behaviors, but it is in fact a being just like the word is a being. Grace is none other than the person of Christ so to walk in grace is to give breath and physicality to Christ in time and space. That’s not just hangin’ out and chillin’. We are Servants of Christ and as such we are of the order of life and must serve life by growing up to His stature and being Him to the world. Well Ken it’s late and I started talking to myself here. Anyway, God bless.
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And that’s why the “C.S.Lewis in Reverse” shtick you get with wanna-be Christian authors — “I’m writing a CHRISTIAN Allegory to Save Souls” — is always gonna crash & burn. Lewis wrote in semi-allegory because that’s the way his storytelling mind worked. You’re not him.
In SF litfandom, there’s an urban legend about a rejection letter from Marion Zimmer Bradley: “Stop showing me how stylishly you can write and JUST TELL ME THE STORY!” The Christian equivalent is “Stop telling me how Christian(TM) you can write and just tell the story!”
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“Like”
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I actually do not agree with you. When we say things like:
the iMonastery IS the balance to the standard fare that you get served up just about everywhere else.
we suddenly set ourselves up to be the new standard and leave no room at all for improvement.
I am challenged to think just as you are, but should it stop? I am pointing out what I think is a rather large blindspot. It is very easy to slip into defining ourselves as the current orthodoxy.
I am pointing out that we are guilty of some of what we are criticizing bookstores for. It is very easy to get the fundamentalist out of fundamentalism, much harder to get the fundamentalism out of the fundamentalist.
A number of us here come from that background (yep, put my name near the top of that list). We have inbuilt reaction mechanisms that do not easily change. So many here have been impacted by a rule bound Christianity, does that mean we go in the opposite direction?
Some time ago I questioned the extreme grace emphasis and never got a satisfactory answer. I thought I was hearing that it is unconditional and we go on living however we want. Out of that theology seems to spring a desire to smack anyone down who dares challenge us out of a comfortable life. I do agree with Chap. Mike that most of life is lived in the ordinary. But there are cases where we do need to be provoked to righteousness and God puts people in our lives to do that (my wife is good for that).
All I am trying to do is issue a caution and say that we need to hear other voices and not be so anxious to jump on people who are more gung ho than we are comfortable with.
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+1
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Ken – You aren’t going to find any place that has the perfect balance. Not until Jesus comes and sets us all straight. Here is how I look at it; It isn’t so much that the iMonastery needs balance but rather that the iMonastery IS the balance to the standard fare that you get served up just about everywhere else. The thoughts and arguments force me to think about things in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise. Argue your heart out about what you don’t agree with. Your beliefs will either be strengthened or changed. Either way it is good.
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Jeff, my point is that this has been a journey. The InternetMonk was a 1 man show, but in time it has evolved into a clearinghouse for ideas, and now as you say:
One day this group will awaken and realize all of their readers have given up on such tripe and are reading and talking with one another in an internet monastery.
If that is true then we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We all came out of the culture that sanitizes bookstore content, so do we want to do the same on the web?
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Ken, you really wouldn’t have liked it when there was just one writer, Michael Spencer. He took us on many journeys, from neo-Calvinism to the brink of Catholicism. Michael was a strong proponent of extreem grace (is there any other kind?) and of getting off of the “hamster wheel” in terms of Christian living. Chaplain Mike and I pale in comparison to the founder of our order.
Oh, and among our ranks as a regular contributor (though not as regular as I would like!) is Craig Bubeck. Craig is editorial director of Wesleyan Publishing House. Does that help?
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I appreciate your thoughts Ken. The only thing that keeps any group from imploding is self examination of the type you have just exemplified. Nothing like investing some real heart energy and getting hammered. It’s been done to me and I’ve done it to others. We must be vigilant to hear the Holy Spirit and speak the truth with kindness and openness. It’s a tall order sometimes, especially with a group which consists, by and large, of strangers.
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See https://internetmonk.com/archive/an-author-of-note for an explanation of Gilderoy Lockhart.
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“I’m saying that I wonder if some, perhaps many, of the authors featured in Christian bookstores today really know Jesus.”
That sounds…yikes…radical?
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I agree. You do get that anywhere (and almost everywhere!).
I kind of thought that we were trying to do things differently here because we have all been through that before.
But I am pointing out a general trend that I have seen over months of reading this blog. I love the way someone put it in a class I listened to, we need to hammer out the truth in Christian community. So it takes guts to seek out diversity of opinion.
I just think we are lopsided and becoming like what we left in our evangelical/fundamentalist past.
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i’d argue that you’ll get that anywhere Ken. Though Jeff’s article seemed to “check his gun at the door” as this article could just easily be applied to mainlines, Fundies or Liberals.
“I am not setting myself up as one to address this imbalance, but we are in dire need of a godly person of a more Wesleyan persuasion who can provide some diversity and balance.”
What about Reformed? We like Wesley too. 😉
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“He simply wanted to to write a children’s tale about a land where animals talked. But as he wrote, said Lewis, the lion forced his way onto the pages.”
That’s a wonderful point to drive home your point Jeff. Lewis simply couldn’t help himself despite his original intentions.
Great article. Jesus, pariticularly his cross, is largely missing from Christian literature these days. Until we own that, we can’t really have/enjoy him.
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I know I risk being voted off the island on this one.
I think the iMonastery is not that different than the bookstores.
We love to pat ourselves on the back that we are different, but I do not see it. I do not see in the writing much diversity of opinion. The 2 main bloggers here (Mike and Jeff) seem to be so comitted to the idea of extravagant grace that you don’t broach any dissent from that line.
From the 2$ seats it almost looks as if anyone out there who might even hint that there really could be a radical Christianity that fits anything other than ‘ordinary life’ provides cannon fodder for the wolves. They are immediately accused of legalism and within a very short time are dealt with, sliced and diced and hung out to dry. Ditto on anyone who may actually believe a Christian should live a holy life.
To me it reminds me of what I see in our education system. We just can’t fathom that some may be wired differently, perhaps for excellence. So we cut them off at the legs and try to make the whole system appeal to the statistical mean.
I am not trying to deny that there are a myriad of problems with some promoting a ‘super christian’, but our reaction here seems to be so strong against it that we squash all dissent.
So I arrive right back at where I was when I first came here, in a group that is beginning to exhibit group think.
I am not setting myself up as one to address this imbalance, but we are in dire need of a godly person of a more Wesleyan persuasion who can provide some diversity and balance.
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I’ve never heard of Gilderoy Lockhart…what has he/she/it written? I guess I don’t know because I don’t shop christian bookstores anymore. I did browse through one recently (specifically the non-fiction shelves) and was struck most by what I couldn’t find… Not a book/author outside the safe circle of same old radio/TV preachers, Lucado/Osteen, spiritual warfare/end times sensationalism, or take-america-back rallying. Here we are in one of the biggest church shake-ups in recent history (Great Emergence) and I couldn’t find anything… certainly nothing from the ’emerging’ movement (and I don’t recall if the neo-reformed was excluded as well…) but I guess it’s not surprising… why would they give space to anyone who is or might be connected with a movement that q dares question or challenge theuestions or challenges the evangelical ghetto? (ie the bookstore’s target market)
I agree that Jesus is not welcome but I also think that one of the big things He instigates is missing as well – and that would be healthy introspection, discernment, ie “thinking”, seems to be missing as well…
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Not an unfair point at all.
But t what about. . .
Brennan Manning
John Ortberg
Richard Foster
and, and.. . . and?!?
Anybody care to add to this list? it would be useful to everybody here if you do!
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What do you do with the real Jesus who, in setting a man free from demonic possession, utterly ruins another man’s business by allowing the demons to inhabit a herd of swine who then go running off a cliff? What do you do with a Jesus who seems to have no regard for servants (imagine those who had to take a pitcher of filthy hand-washing water to their master and ask him to taste it) or homeowners (“Hey, glad your buddy can walk and all, but what about this hole in my roof?”).
Well, if there isn’t a writer who can make a novel or a play out of this, I volunteer to take up the challenge. Any possible readers out there?
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