Editorial
March/April, 1972
Volume 7 Number 2
Jesus Christ Superstar is a rock opera that in crude street language depicts the last seven days of Jesus’ life on earth. It first appeared in 1970 as a two-record album and has since been made into a musical play which is becoming one of the most popular ever to come out of Broadway. The opera has been widely received in America. Parts of it are played frequently on radio stations; high school classes study it with enthusiasm; it is being acclaimed by many religious organizations and churches; our denomination’s Messenger has reviewed it rather favorably.
The rock opera depicts Jesus as a sinful, bitter, defeated man. At the start the disciples say to Jesus, “Hey, what’s the buzz?” In answer to his “hip” fishermen, the Jesus of Superstar admits that he doesn’t know what’s happening. Jesus is confused, apprehensive, and unsure of the future. He senses a crisis, but doesn’t know how to meet it. But the Jesus of the Bible “steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), telling His disciples plainly that He would die and rise again the third day (Matthew 16:21). He informed His followers not to worry, for He would send His Spirit to comfort them (John 14:16). The opera asks of Jesus, “Who are you?” And there is repeatedly one answer, “Just a man.” The opera makes death the end of Jesus; the resurrection is left out. Superstar denies the deity and sinless nature of Christ, and presents Jesus as ignorant of His purpose and of the plan of God.
Superstar is not only inadequate in its presentation of Christ, but it also perverts the men and women who associated with Jesus. For example, one who listens to the opera (and follows the script) soon discovers that Judas is a man of principles. Judas feels that Jesus’ rise in popularity has an unwholesome effect on the Master, and so he pleads with Jesus to change his ways. When his pleas to Jesus fail, Judas goes to Caiaphas convinced that Jesus must be stopped. According to the opera, Judas didn’t want any money, but the priests convinced him to take it. Judas is consciously working for the good of the people. When Judas realizes that Christ will suffer death, he returns the money and commits suicide but only because the people would blame him. The mob didn’t understand his pure motive. To the very end, Judas was right and Jesus was wrong – and Judas shouts at God that this is “Your foul and bloody crime! You have murdered me!”
The Scriptures present Judas as a completely different man. He went to Caiaphas because of greed. His first words to the chief priests, were “What will you give me?” (Matthew 26:15). Superstar leaves the impression that Judas had compassion on the poor and that he was a concerned humanitarian. The Bible teaches us to think, “not that he cared for the poor, but he was a thief” (John 12:6). When the real Judas saw Jesus about to die, he knew that Christ was the. Messiah, and that he himself (Judas) was guilty before God. He confessed his sin to the priests when he returned the blood money. In despair for divine wrath justly come upon him, Judas hanged himself (Matthew 27:3-5).
The opera suggests that Jesus had an affair with Mary Magdalene, presents Christ and the apostles drunk at the last supper, pictures the apostles as idiots, and Judas Iscariot as an instrument of God the Father. True – Jesus was a man. A Christ who is only divine, is a distortion of truth. But a Christ who is only human, is just as great a distortion. God’s Christ is the God-man. He has a true humanity, but this is different from depicting Christ as only a human sinner like us. Walter Chantry says, “If you have ever knelt before Jesus Christ in worship, and felt the glow of communion with Him, you will feel righteous indignation rising in your veins as ‘Superstar’ drags your Lord of glory into the gutters of sin and perversion.” We agree – and urge Brethren not to get carried away by all the nonsense being peddled about Jesus nowadays. He is not what people say He is – He is only what the Bible says He is. For a study about who Jesus Christ really is, read the article featured in this issue of the BRF Witness.
My reaction to Superstar can best be summarized in the words of a youth identified with the Jesus Movement on the West Coast, as reported in Newsweek (10/25/71): “It’s terrible,” said 23-year-old Kathy Seay of the Alamo Foundation, a center of the Jesus Movement in Los Angeles. “They turn the whole thing around to where Judas was really a good guy and Jesus was bad. They make a mockery of the Gospel, the Crucifixion, the Blood, the Son of God, and the price paid for sins. I’ve never heard anything so awful and hideous in my whole life. Any young person who believes in Jesus Christ as the Son of God will feel the way I do. It made me sick on my stomach when I read the text.” The editor of Christianity Today says, “Those who have tickets (to see the musical Jesus Christ Superstar) stand in front of the theater for an hour or more, waiting to see a superstar. Instead they see a superhoax.”
Superstar or Son of God?
“Jesus Christ — Superstar,” the rock opera from England, is confronting the now generation with the most crucial of all questions: Who is Jesus Christ? To many, the title will seem sacrilegious. However, the widespread controversy over this rock opera has indicated that young people, turned off by the organized church, are still obsessed as never before with Jesus.
The opera is supposedly based on the Scriptures, but it lacks the clear compelling testimony of Scripture to the person of Jesus Christ.
Over and over the chorus asks, “Who are you?” The album concludes with the voice of Judas coming back from the dead and still questioning who Jesus is. “Don’t get me wrong,” says Judas, “I only want to know. ” And then the haunting chorus follows, “Jesus Christ – Superstar, do you think you’re what they say you are?” The opera does not supply the answer. In fact, it ends with Christ in the grave. This underlines the dilemma of many contemporary young people. They are attracted by Jesus – but aren’t sure who He is.
Some see Jesus as a revolutionary. He was, but not in the same way as the violent revolutionaries of His day. His kingdom, He said, was not of this world. It was not by force of arms that His followers turned the Roman Empire upside down.
Others picture Jesus as “gentle Jesus, meek and mild. ” Again, that’s true, but at the same time there was something tough about Him. He said that He had come to cast fire on the earth and that He had come to bring not peace but a sword.
Some see Jesus as the first hippie. However, the Bible doesn’t indicate that Jesus appeared in any way different from the other Jews of His time. In any case He said that what was inside a man was more important than the outside.
Other people believe Jesus to be an establishment man … the teacher who inspired Western civilization, chaplain of the status quo. It is true that Jesus has been one of the greatest influences in Western society, yet He offended many of the leaders of His day by exposing their hypocrisy.
Some would think of Him as a black Jesus, leader of an underground black movement. But Jesus was not black, neither was He a white, Anglo-Saxon, blue-eyed blond. Jesus belongs to no one race He is for all men.
So the more we try to squeeze Jesus into our pigeonholes, the more He will not fit. He is bigger than any of them.
Some people will say, “Jesus is cool.” That is what was said in “Superstar” – “I have to say this for Him . . . Jesus is cool.” But what do we mean by that? Some people are simply saying as Judas did, “I just want to use Jesus … He’s the ‘in’ thing.”
Who, then, is this Jesus?
For those who say He was a bad man, there is one convincing piece of evidence that proves to me He was not a bad man. If you want to find out what is wrong about some public figure, you ask his friends and those who work for him. We’ve all read the exposes from former employees in the White House or in Buckingham Palace who have sold their memoirs telling about the little human weaknesses of officials they have served. But the men who shared Jesus’ life for three years – who saw Him at all hours of day and night – who watched Him when He was tired, hungry, and disappointed and under pressure – were the men who first claimed that Jesus was without sin and who said that He was God.
Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” John, the beloved disciple, wrote, “In Him was no sin”(l John 3:5).
Any thinking man must realize that the charge that Jesus Christ was a bad man is utterly false.
There are also thousands of people today who take the position that Jesus was just a good man. But there is one great difficulty in claiming this. Dr. W. E. Sangster said, “An infallible mark of a good man is that he has a keen sense of guilt …the better he is, the more he is conscious of his own failure.
By unanimous testimony, Jesus was a good man. Yet He had no sense of guilt. He prayed, “Father, forgive them.” Never once did He pray. “Father, forgive Me.” He said, “I do always those things which are pleasing to my Father.” He issued a public challenge on one occasion: “Which of you convicteth Me of sin?” And nobody took up the challenge!
If He was merely a good man, then He should have had a sense of sin – but He didn’t, and that points us to the conviction that He was more than a man.
Was He really the Son of God? We must know the answer to that question. If He was God, then we can depend on what He said and did. If He was not, then we might just as well admit He was either deceived or a deceiver.
But let me suggest to you several reasons why I believe that Jesus was God in the flesh:
First, He accepted worship – and that is the right of God alone.
Second, He forgave sins – and that too, is God’s right alone.
Third, He made the most fantastic personal claims. He said, “I am the Bread of Life.”; “I am the Light of the World”; “No man comes to the Father but by Me.” When He made those fantastic claims, was He mad or was He speaking the truth?
Fourth, men from all races, tribes, tongues, and nations have confessed Him as Lord and Saviour. As Dr. Sangster says, “Nearly a third of the world now acknowledges the Carpenter as King.”
But here is one further proof. And that is the personal proof that comes when Jesus Christ is encountered in your own life. When you meet Jesus, you know that He is more than a man. You know it because He makes you face yourself. He sees the real you and you become conscious of your sin and your failure .
And you become conscious of something else … that Jesus loves you. He died on the cross for you. He calls you to follow Him. There’s the proof: Once you have really met Him your heart cries out and will not be satisfied until it is given to Him.
The rock opera, “Jesus Christ — Superstar,” leaves us with a haunting question: “Who are You?” The New Testament leaves us with a triumphant affirmation. He is not “Superstar.” He is the Son of God. He is not dead. He is alive, forever more
What will you do with this Jesus today? Will you call Him a bad man? Will you dismiss Him as simply a good man? Or will you worship, trust, and follow Him as the God-Man?
Until He rules you, He cannot rule the world. Until He saves you, He cannot save the world. Until He changes you, He cannot change the world. May it be today that you get down with Thomas and say to Him, “My Lord and my God.”
This pertinent article was written by Leighton Ford, and appeared in the September 1971 issue of Moody Monthly. It is used here by permission of the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.
“For God so loved the world,
at He gave His Only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth
in Him should not Perish
but have Everlasting
Life.”
John 3:16
