For Christmas, as a gift rom my wife, I received a copy of the "Lego New Testament." It is exactly what it purports to be. Illustrated and told by artist Brendan Powell Smith, this book is a graphic novel interpretation of the entire New Testament, as told through staged photos of Lego characters. Looking at the cover, you'd expect it to be kind of cute, charming and funny. It is in a few places. But overall--and I learned this the hard way, i.e., from my kid's interest in it--it is actually pretty gruesomely violent.
Now, on the one hand, I have to cry "fowl" on some counts, because I feel Smith may just be drawn to the gorier stories. He rarely if ever misses an opportunity to portray violence, even in parables and even at times in which it's implicit at best in the text itself. And of course, it's a very strange New Testament indeed that skips over every single Epistle--including all their messages of love, reconciliation and God's grace--and yet devotes the last 80 pages of the book to recreating Revelation in all its horrific detail.
But on the other hand, as a lectionary preacher as part of a denomination that favors the Revised Common Lectionary, I have to also be aware of the plank in my own eye. If Smith is telling the Quentin Tarantino version of the New Testament, we may also be accused of telling the Disney version. Small wonder that so many of our folks believe in a "New Testament God": You know, the blissed-out, loving one who never gets upset but rather consistently burps therapeutic sunshine into our lives, regardless of any sin or injustice we make ourselves party to. We worship the nice God, who so loved the world. Not the mean, vengeful, "go up that hill and sacrifice your son 'cause I said so" God. I was well into my adult life before I cracked open my Bible--not just in the prophets, but in the prophetic teachings of Jesus himself--and pondered the fact that God actually does occasionally get upset, and that what we do actually does matter, even though we are forgiven of it.
So I'll not mince words: The New Testament is gory. Read it. I mean, for goodness' sake, its very center--and the place where orthodox Christians of all stripes get our bearings--is a man nailed to a tree to die of exposure. But it does not follow that we serve a violent God, much less that God commands or condones violence on our part. In fact, I would venture to say that violence throughout the New Testament is much more a red flag of warning than a checkered flag of "go get-em." It says: "This is who we have become. This is what we do to each other. This is who God has come to save." It does not shrink away from the consequence of sin. Sin hurts. It hurts like hell, literally. And Jesus bore the full brunt of it.
So no, you needn't call CPS: I do not intend to read through the entire Lego New Testament with my kids: not until they are much, much older. But especially in light of the grim and gruesome reminders we've received from Boston to Afghanistan to Syria, I do intend to be real with my kids about the violence that exists out there: that people do very bad things to each other, and that some of those bad things can never be taken back. I intend to let them know that the Bible--both Old and New Testament--does, in fact, have some very relevant teachings about the world in which we live. That violence is real, and that when you stand against it, you can be assured that it will get much, much worse before it gets better. But the way of Jesus--the way of peace, of nonviolent public witness to injustice, of telling the truth about injustice and accepting the consequences--does, in fact, work. An empty cross and an empty tomb, even in our violent world, bear eternal witness to that.
