Is Jesus Your Tech Support? Did I Really Just Type That?

I hope I never see a bumper sticker that reads anything like this headline.

Of course, we all read or hear things like that, often from well-meaning Christians.  And unfortunately, we all tend to reduce God to our “copilot,” or to one of the “images of a small god” that I talked about in this week’s sermon at Sojourn Gathered:

1. Soft Grandfather
2. Computer Programmer
3. Personal Shopper
4. Demanding Boss
5. Crazy Cop

We talked about Jesus as your soft and snuggly grandpa yesterday. It’s one of society’s main ideas about God — sort of like Father Time.  But how about the computer programmer god?

Maybe He’s your IT support, strictly for those times when you don’t understand something or you want an upgrade.  Maybe you’d like him to come up with a program that will make things easier or speed things up for you.

Or maybe you don’t think of the computer programmer god in relation to you at all.  Your image of god is a scientific-minded guy who writes and tests the “computer code” that makes the universe run.  He doesn’t care about you personally — He just designed some pretty cool software to keep this planet spinning through space.

Colossians 1 does say that all things were created by and for Christ.  And, far beyond what any analogy to a computer programmer would hold, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

But it says a lot more than that, not only regarding who He is but what He has done:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation

Is Christ just your tech support?  Or is He just the really brainy guy who made your operating system?  Or is He your savior and Lord?