Replacements for Jesus

In the novel Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor, there is a street preacher named Hazel Motes who preaches the “Church Without Christ” and speaks of the need for a “new jesus”:

“What you need is something to take the place of Jesus, something that would speak plain. The Church Without Christ don’t have a Jesus but it needs one! It needs a new jesus! It needs one that’s all man, without blood to waste, and it needs one that don’t look like any other man so you’ll look at him. Give me such a jesus, you people. Give me such a new jesus and you’ll see how far the Church Without Christ can go!” (p. 80)

A follower of Hazel’s named Enoch takes it upon himself to bring a “new jesus” to Hazel. The new messiah? A shrunken, 3-foot-long embalmed corpse, of a “dried yellow color.” (p. 56) Needless to say, the Church Without Christ did not go far.

Oh, but don't we like to try and find replacements for Christ? Don’t we place our trust in stock portfolios and IRAs? Don't we give our time to reality television, or shaving a couple of strokes off our golf games? Don't we seek happiness in buying more knick-knacks and baubles for our already cluttered houses?

And some of the things we try to replace Christ with are even worse, things such as drunkenness and carousing, porn and illicit sex—the very sorts of things which Paul warns in Galatians 6.21 will keep a person from inheriting the kingdom of God.

Whether a thing is wicked in its own right (porn) or merely neutral (shopping), when we turn to it in place of Christ, it becomes just as ugly and dead as the shrunken corpse which Enoch brought to Hazel. God said, of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son… hear ye him.” (Matt. 17.5)