If you’ve ever known a churchy person, you’ve probably been Jesus Juked.
Some fifteen years ago, the Christian comedian-turned-consultant Jon Acuff ran a satire blog called Stuff Christians Like and coined the term Jesus Juke for posterity. A Jesus Juke is when a Christian interrupts the normal flow of a lighthearted conversation with a pietistic platitude, injecting a legalistic or spiritual matter where it doesn’t belong. A Jesus Juke can be something as groan inducing as a youth pastor’s cheesy sermon illustration (“I know you’re talking about pink pony clubs, but I know an accepting and welcoming club run by a man riding on a donkey!”) or a hyper-spiritual interjection into an everyday topic (“I don’t go to Starbucks anymore; I stopped buying daily coffees and am donating to the mission fund”). Jesus Jukes are annoying, so annoying that we Christians embraced a derisive term for them. They’re ultimately ineffective and more likely to induce groans or eye rolls than inspire someone’s growth in faith.
I’d like for us to consider a second, equally frustrating conversation derailer that deserves its own derisive term. Alongside the Jesus Juke, I’d like to formally identify and describe for you the James Juke.
Some months ago, I and my good friends Todd and Cali reflected on the Book of James for Mockingbird’s Terrible Parable’s podcast. You don’t have to be a Christian for very long to notice the friction and dissonance that the second chapter of James creates in comparison to the rest of the New Testament canon. We discussed in that podcast how people glom on to James’ admonition that “a person is justified by works and not by faith,” and ignore how the gospel writers and Paul emphasize the primacy of faith and belief in the Christian life. It’s reading 99% of the Bible through the interpretive framework of the 1% and not the other way around. Take a listen — we talk more about the tension in that podcast episode.
Since that episode, I have been amazed at how often James has come up and in circumstances that break my heart.
Here’s an example, edited for anonymity. A young man came to me in pastoral confidence to talk about his pornography habit. He had tried for years to kick the habit, but found himself going back to that dry well to a despondent degree. This young man had a Calvinist background and was so discouraged he was seriously considering himself to be reprobate, damned to hell, because he couldn’t rein in his habit. I asked him about his view of God and asked what it might mean to start our conversation from the prima facie position that God loved him before we addressed the bad habit. His response: “Yeah, God is gracious. I get all that, but don’t I need works to prove my faith? If I was really saved, wouldn’t I have this under control by now?” There, my friends, was the James Juke.
Another example: a friend and I were discussing an issue that involved church and state matters. We were debating how a certain Christian might respond to a matter of the day. All these matters are complicated, of course, and it is entirely possible for Christians to agree on a value while disagreeing on how best to implement it as public policy. As we went back and forth, my friend took issue with the fact that I didn’t agree with his policy implementation. “Bryan, I know you’re a grace guy, but faith without works is dead, and we’re called to good works that are political in nature.” Alas, I had been James Juked again, this time over political and social justice matters.
Don’t get me wrong: James Jukes are fantastic at their primary use. If you need to circumvent the untamed and complex nature of God’s grace at work in someone’s everyday life, and if you’re concerned about behavior change over heart change, the James Juke is the perfect tool.
Take the above examples. Any pastor worth their salt knows that pornography habits are a coping mechanism and that the way to help people get a handle on their unwanted compulsion is to help them with other elements of their life. But this is very complicated and individual work, which may require some uncomfortable spiritual, psychological, and emotional investment. A James Juke bypasses the complexity of loving someone into the dark depths of their spirit. It’s simply easier to write the matter off as a failure of spirit instead of, say, exploring an embarrassing teenage relationship, opening up about a past instance of sexual abuse, or chasing a dopamine hit to ward off the negativity of depression.
Likewise, it’s impossible to read any work of Christian social advocacy without running into a James Juke. This is true on the left and the right, regardless of the cause — helping the poor, family values, ending human trafficking, ending the AIDS pandemic, etc. Applying one’s Christian values in the public square is complex, as complex as the pastoral care mentioned above. A properly timed James Juke can cut through that complexity with a pious urgency to “do something now (or else),” regardless of whether or not the activity will have a positive or lasting outcome. A James Juke is excellent for soliciting signatures and donations, but it doesn’t necessarily create a Christian committed to a cause.
The James Juke assumes that preaching a gospel of grace isn’t enough to inspire people on to love and good deeds. It believes people will only act faithfully if they are guilted, shamed, or leveraged into doing so; that moral issues are an issue of willpower; that tacit obedience matters more than the heart; and that God is a mere bystander waiting for people to get their act together.
My anthropology is low enough to recognize that some people will hear the gospel of grace and use it as an excuse to justify bad behaviors. And yet, the only way I’ve seen transformation happen in my ministry is through the lightbulb click of God’s grace and love hitting home in the human heart. All the stuff that ministers are privileged to see apart from the wider world, it all happens because of love and mercy and not law. Spouses forgiving their cheating partners, family grudges buried, enemies reconciled, bad habits kicked, inner healing experienced, lifelong calls to service or advocacy … on my watch, these have never manifested through command, coercion, or correction, the exact kind of leverage a James Juke is excellent at using.
And the sadder truth is that, in my own limited circles, whenever the James Juke is deployed, it stops any hope of transformation or growth or epiphany in its tracks. Men’s groups sit around and quote James together, look down in shame because they’re not good enough, and then break until next week to do it all over again. Activists become discouraged at the church — “Why don’t they do the good works I need from them? Are they even really believers?” — and give up on their quest to change society for the better. By denying the complexities of our sin and our social systems and by presenting easier solutions like “work harder” and “do more,” we’re only cultivating burnout and exhaustion, if not total dropout of the Christian enterprise altogether.
And so, instead of being derailed into a long rehashing over the doctrines of grace, I now have my retort: “Don’t James Juke me here, this is serious business we’re tending to.” Perhaps, with some good-natured teasing and a light laugh, we can call a James Juke for what it is and use it to increase our trust in a gracious God as we navigate life’s most complex and complicated matters.
Great stuff Bryan!