Who Gets Custody?

Who Gets Custody of Jesus?
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

Yesterday, a complete stranger
accused me of the heresy
of the gospel of social justice,
and went on to intimate that
I was heading for flaming hell
if I didn’t say an unequivocal yes
to his question about whether I believed
in penal substitutionary atonement.

While I’m not really fussed about
the mythological eternal burning,
his questions clarify the blazing chasm
that expands between us as we approach
this great ecclesiastical divorce.

I am too accustomed, perhaps,
to seeing myself outside the group,
living instead in the wide open meadow,
not the confinement of the windowless box,
avoiding the bindings and locks of dogma,
and questions that require a yes or a no.

Do you base your faith on what he said,
or what was said about him?
Which will it be, justice or atonement?
Who gets custody of Jesus?
Those who don’t want to die
without being covered by his death?
Or those who seek to live
according to the story of his life?