salt-shaker.blog

Religion and/or cultural morality just won’t cut it for living a kingdom life. Those who intend to follow Jesus find huge roadblocks against His call to love, joy, peace, selflessness, care, otherness, and connection. There is little, if any, natural support for truly forgiving painful transgression, responding in kindness to insult, or overlooking slight. There is opposition against taking time to absorb His teachings, hesitancy to cultivate the transparency needed to engage Him about our true selves, resistance to the effort to listen and watch for His answers. In fact, the pathways of self defense, self justification and self help are much more accessible and palatable to the earth-connected part of us. Unfortunately, the ‘natural’ becomes the ‘normal’ unless we put concerted effort against it. Our own reasoning, the advice of friends, social media morality, and personal bias subtly (or not) undercut the call to ‘take up our cross and follow’. Before we know it we have become that ‘religious Pharisee’ that we so despise.

Morality is not discipleship. The morality of the day is connected to somebody’s idea of political, cultural or religious ethical behavior. Kingdom living does not necessarily conform to that performance model. As Tim Keller so aptly puts it, ‘Jesus did not come to make good men more moral, He came to make dead men alive’. Achievement loses – desperation wins. We forget that ‘without Him we can do nothing’, and if we are doing nothing (kingdom-wise) it is certainly without Him. Dallas Willard That ‘nothing’ that we are doing may look commendable in the eyes of a society that redefines love as tolerance. We are applauded for wading in a spiritual kiddie pool while Jesus calls us out in the storm to walk on the water. That kind of choice is not made by natural or cultural impulse. In fact, we resist in order to avoid social censure. Jesus addresses that mindset when He says “ (You are) more concerned to have the approval of men than to have the approval of God.” Jn 12:43 – not a good strategy for discipleship.

Then there is the thought that you belong to God when really you belong to your church. Or to your non-church. Or to your social justice agenda. Or to your personal relationship with Jesus that excludes others who are His followers. Our westernized and americanized version of truth is foreign to much of historical Christianity, and is certainly not compatible to what we saw Jesus and the apostles live out. Theirs was not an individual ‘me and Jesus’, and ‘I am going to heaven when I die so I can live like I want while I am here’ kind of faith. We feel very secure developing that kind of viewpoint – not because it is true, but because it is filtered through the lens of our ‘enlightened’ perspective fostered by a shallow understanding of the Gospel. Jesus came and lived an obscure life, obedient to the humans that His Father entrusted Him to – fallen creatures who needed redemption like the rest of us. He wasn’t afraid because He knew that the enduring kingdom rewards surrender and submission to the will of Another – the One Who knows infinitely more (not a metaphorical reference) than we do about how things really work. Self assertion, self promotion, and self preoccupation in general work against our own best interests and the good of mankind. Dependence, humility, obedience – these are not natural inclinations, but nevertheless are kingdom requirements. The whole point of Jesus message was to proclaim and demonstrate a life attached to reality.  “Jesus said, “You’re tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing God in all this. You’re at a dead end. If you won’t believe I am who I say I am, you’re at the dead end of sins. You’re missing God in your lives.” Jn 8:23-24Message What the Message Bible so tactfully translates as ‘dead end of sins’ literally says ‘you will die in your sins’. Without genuine personal connection to Him that is the true condition of every human being. Like it or not, that is Jesus’ assessment.

So, what does that connection look like? Well, Jesus called us to believe in Him – not intellectual assent, but ‘get in the wheelbarrow and trust Him to guide it across the skyscraper high tight-wire’ kind of trust. He came and called people to Him – not to a building, or to a belief system, but to a community. Not the rich and famous influencers, but the nobodies. Not a homogenous group either. There were a couple of sets of siblings, there were smelly fishermen, a political radical, a despised tax collector, a skeptic, and a traitor. These are the ones Jesus picked to change the world. Obviously this is a total reversal of sound business recruiting wisdom, and yet these men learned to embrace one another as their devotion to a Man eclipsed their animosities and differences. Well, except for that one guy whose greed and contempt got the better of him. No wonder Jesus says ‘By this shall all men know you are my followers – because you love one another.” It was not the love of the poor that set them apart, although that is also an emphasis of His ministry. Perhaps it takes more faith to love our flawed brethren. Connection to Jesus immerses us in connection to others – or it should. We need each other to grow, to see Him, to serve. Individualism just doesn’t cut it. So the next step is to do the hard work (understatement of the year) of finding that community, imperfect though it will be, for you to bless with your presence, gifts and perspective – a place to worship, pray, learn and serve – a place to discover and repair some of your blind spots. May the Lord guide and empower you!

shalom!