Now as nice as this theory sounds, it’s not based on reality. Prior to His arrest, trial, and crucifixion, Jesus was anything but submissive. He was constantly slandering the preachers and teachers of His day. He was constantly going out of His way to start fights and scandalize the Jews. He intentionally provoked Old Covenant believers into wanting to kill Him. Peter knows this better than most, since he was up close to Jesus for three years. So it’s utterly absurd for Peter to make Jesus out like some passive lay down who never made waves. If we really want to imitate Jesus, we’d march into church on Sunday mornings and start railing about what idiots our preachers are and what an idolatrous yuck the Church is today. This is what Jesus did in His day. He ripped on the highly respected preachers of His time and He was constantly taking potshots at Yahweh’s chosen people. He’d march into synagogues and the Temple in Jerusalem and start firing off offensive zingers. He’d seek out the company of unclean people, touch them, then refuse to go present the sacrifices that Yahweh required to fix His unclean state. Jesus was an obnoxious, alpha personality who had no use for diplomacy and basic social manners. So when Peter says “be like Christ”, he is really telling women to “be like the Christ I just invented, because if you act like the real Christ, obviously that’s going to create problems.”

To try and define Jesus by how He behaved during His crucifixion ordeal is ridiculous. We can’t just ignore three years of obnoxious scene-making and say, “Look, Jesus didn’t talk back when they were whipping Him. What a docile Fellow He was.” Yet this is what Peter and many Christians today try to do. For some reason we have this burning need to tone Jesus down and completely misrepresent Him as “sweet, meek and mild.” What’s sweet, meek and mild about Jesus showcasing Himself as ultra-awesome in the book of Revelation? What’s humble about Jesus creating scenes of all of Heaven constantly falling down before Him and shouting out endless praise about how magnificent He is? Humility is for humans, not Gods. Our Creators are not humble, and They are certainly not mild. They can be very sweet when They want to be, but They can also rain down terror and wrath. We need to call Peter out on the game he’s playing here because it’s one that leads us into all kinds of messes. When we make up lies about who Christ really is and how He behaves, we start trying to imitate a God who doesn’t exist.