Jesus is Lord

the more one respects Jesus, the more one must be brokenhearted, embarrassed, furious, or some combination thereof when one considers what we Christians have done with Jesus. That's certainly true when it comes to calling Jesus Lord, something we Christians do a lot, often without the foggiest idea of what we mean. Has he become (I shudder to ask this) less our Lord and more our Mascot?

Lord means "master" (the very opposite of mascot), and there are at least three senses of the word master that apply to Jesus. First, Lord suggests authority and kingship. Now whenever we use words like king, kingdom, kingship, or reign, we run into problems similar to those when using son and father. In addition to dominance and masculinity issues, we face the problem that for contemporary people these words all feel archaic--quaintly archaic or barbarously archaic. Associating monarchy with nondemocratic and corrupt regimes (because "absolute power corrupts absolutely," we've seen again and again) or with symbolic monarchies without much real power, it's so hard, perhaps impossible, for us to have a feel for the word king even remotely similar to what people would have felt in Bible times.

--Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

This book is seriously amazing, so if any of you are bored and looking for someone to challenge you, go get it. But that part really stood out to me because when I was 14 I stood up in front of the church and told everybody that I wanted to make Jesus the Lord of my life, and I don't think I had any idea what I was saying. I still struggle with trying to dethrone myself as Lord over my life, but at least now I think I have at least a tiny grasp on that idea. Back then I really do think that I wanted Jesus to be my mascot, more than my Lord. Thankfully he had other ideas. I hope I will continue to let him be my ruler, and stop trying to take over.