The Lordship Conspiracy

Taken from the book, A Generous Orthodoxy, The Lordship Theory suggests that Christianity has successfully dethroned Jesus as Lord to such a degree that the “Jesus” who is preached, pasted on car stickers, serenaded in gooey love songs, and prayed to, is an impostor. Using the following proofs to make the argument:

1. We have retained Jesus as Saviour, but promoted the apostle Paul to Lord and Teacher. And even as Saviour, we limit Jesus to only saving us from hell.

2. Two of the ways we did this was by (a) assuming that the purpose of Jesus and his gospel was to simply get people’s souls into heaven after death and therefore concluding that the only really important thing about Jesus was his death, birth, and/or resurrection and by (b) deciding that Jesus’ message was only “spiritual” and therefore pertained to “eternity” and not “history”.

3. We developed theological systems that taught us how to avoid many of Jesus’ teachings and reinterpreted those we couldn’t avoid.

4. We made up for our demotion of Jesus being our Lord and Teacher by saying or singing his name more often, and by saying “Lord, Lord” as much as possible, preferably with deep feelings and high volume. This allowed us to still feel like good Christians whether or not we did, or cared about doing, anything he said.

A Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLauren