salt-shaker.blog

What does the word ‘Christian’ bring to mind in our time? The perception of a skeptical culture is that Christians are against. They oppose values that society holds dear: the right to choose sexual identity, to choose the fate of an unborn person, to choose the context of morality, to choose my own version of truth. Individual autonomy frees me to be dismissive, condemning and oppressive to the “other” who is so profoundly ignorant as to hold a different opinion. I hold these ideals very tightly to validate my personhood. Basically I become an ideologue (an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular belief system – Webster).

Religion, on the other hand, sets morality within the framework of a particular doctrine. Sometimes it lines up with the culture, and sometimes it doesn’t. Our truth is defined in the doctrine we hold. The trajectory is also that we can become rigid and harsh towards those outside. Self-righteousness seeps in as we strive to keep the rules. In religion our worth depends on our adherence, and since I so miserably fail I bolster my performance by comparison with the less enlightened. This attitude slips in so subtly that I don’t even notice that now I too am an ideologue.

We would hope that our Christian faith makes us loving, tolerant, caring generous people. Although Jesus made some very intense enemies with His teachings, He also had an abundance of love, compassion and kindness for those who were ignorant of His ways, misled by religion, or weak to choose good. When we represent Him we so often want to set people straight about ‘the truth’, but do we reflect His heart? I know I fall short constantly, convicted of condescension towards those who choose to live without faith in God. We cannot hide that attitude in our interactions, as social media postings by Christians ‘defending’ the truth so eminently demonstrate. Repentance is in order.

What really bothers me is to see that often the neighbors I am seeking to win for Christ are the same ones who rally around the community in times of calamity and tragedy. Their generosity with time and resources is impressive! And this while my church keeps going about business as usual. So how does one identify a Christ follower? If it is by kindness and morality, a lot of pew sitters are out and faith deniers are in.

Jesus called us to follow Him. Doctrine is important, and He taught a lot of it, because kingdom ways are not natural. The good we see in unbelievers around us reflects the image of God in them. This natural humanitarianism, however, is not the qualifier for for redemption. No one but Jesus is good enough. We have many good people in the church who follow a program but not Jesus. There are many good people outside the church whose kindness dwarfs that of many of us believers. But human goodness is not pure and unadulterated and complete like Jesus’. It falls short. Jesus says HE is the way.

Nobody can trust their good works. Motives must be evaluated. One of the most frightening passages to me is 1 Corinthians 13:1-3: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” I can be the epitome of a ‘good’ person and have it “profit me nothing”.

So what now? What does God want of me?? To learn Jesus – to learn selfless love – to follow Him above all else, rejecting my lust for moral superiority, doctrinal correctness, spiritual gifting, or cultural approval. He wants me in that awkward place where I have to depend on the Jesus who was constantly baffling the disciples with apparent non-sequiters and counter-intuitive decisions which sometimes looked relevant, and sometimes looked insane. It was their ‘denying of self’ trust in their King that took them to a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Our little kingdoms can and will be shaken by storm, tragedy, injustice, doubt, derision, disappointment, disillusionment, and fear. But a disciple clings to his teacher, throwing his struggles and unbelief on Him, waiting for an answer, doing the next thing he suspects he is called to, and leaving the rest with God. Now that is a messy, awkward, uncertain, illogical way to live – the narrow difficult way. A hidden work – the way of a disciple. Christ formed in you, not moral transformation. When He says ‘follow Me’, He precedes it with “pick up your cross”. He knows it will be worth it – He has gone that way before us to prove it. No suffering, no glory. In the words of one of my favorite songs: “I want to live for something bigger than me, stronger than fear, brighter than apathy.” How about you?

Bonus – here is a link to that song I referenced.

Shalom!