Jesus is not Harvey Dent
IIf you are not interested in the Batman comic franchise, you don’t get the title. If you are still interested, let me explain Harvey Dent.
In the comic world of Batman, Harvey Dent was a district attorney in the city of Gotham. But a bad guy threw acid on Dent, leaving half his body wrecked. This brought out the wickedness in Dent who decides whether to do good or evil with the flip of a coin. His evil persona’s name is Two-Face. He does not have a moral code. He acts arbitrarily, indifferent to the effect of his choices.
Let me explain what I mean by my blog title, "Jesus is not Harvey Dent" with a simple illustration. If I’m walking down the road telling my non-Christian friend about Jesus and the love of God, and my friend starts to let his guard down and wants to learn more about Jesus, but just then a truck runs off the road and hits us, killing us instantly.
Would I awake in the afterlife standing on Jesus’ good side and see my friend standing on Jesus’ bad side? Would my friend look at Jesus and think I lied to him, because Jesus looks nothing like I described him, full of love, grace, and peace? Instead Jesus looks like the devil, intent on making sure my friend’s indecision would result in an eternity of burning flesh and pitchforks? Ultimately, is Jesus a two face? Is he the same yesterday, today, and forever. Is he only good to all humans in this life and a complete dick to those who died without praying the right prayer or getting baptized or joined the wrong church?
Let me share a true story, about Davy Crockett, in his own words. The Creek American Indian tribe fought against the young American nation for their independence, for the preservation of their territory. They attacked Americans at a fort and massacred them. The encroaching Americans wanted retribution. Davy Crockett formed his own paramilitary group, looking for some Creeks to bring to justice. Eventually, they came across an occupied village. Some Creeks fought, some surrendered, and some sought shelter in a house crowded with 46 warriors. Crockett and his men set fire to the house. He wrote about it in a letter to his wife.
It was, somehow or other, found out that the house had a potatoe (sic) cellar under it, and an immediate examination was made, for we were all as hungry as wolves. We found a fine chance of potatoes in it, and hunger compelled us to eat them, though I had a little rather no, if I could have helped it, for the oil of the Indians we had burned up on the day before had run down on them, and they looked like they had been stewed with fat meat. (p. 41, Jacksonland by Steve Inskeep, 2015)
It’s not hard to imagine some of Crockett’s troops were Christian in some sense. It may even be possible that some of the Creeks were believers as well. Some of the Creeks killed were also children. Now when they appear in heaven after that battle, the killed and soon to be grease for the Americans' hash browns, as well as the mortally wounded attackers, does Jesus turn his good side to the believers, whether they were the murderers or the murdered, and welcome them in, and turn his disfigured side to the unbelievers, whether they were the murderers or the murdered, and shoo them off to another burning?
Is Jesus Harvey Dent/Two-Face?
Is he Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde?
Is he a good shepherd?
Is he who he says he is?
Is he the one in whom “all will be made alive” as St. Paul tells the Corinthian church?
Is he love incarnate?
I believe the latter.
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