I get tired of people telling me to be a better Christian.

I was watching an old episode of Seinfeld the other day and the gang was talking about going to funerals. Jerry hated going because it always made him feel like he ought to do more with his life, but then—when he tried—he couldn’t figure out what more he could be doing. I know… It was a Seinfeld reference, you were expecting a punch-line. But the joke part is kind of on us.

I wish every one of us could experience the thrill of something akin to climbing Everest—or whatever exciting thing you and I believe is going to give our life some final kind of extra meaning. Because it’s worth it to feel the exhilaration of finishing something spectacular and then quickly realizing that it didn’t add poop to your worth. The mountain won’t remember you. It won’t give one fudge about the strips of skin or drops of blood you left on its face. It’ll just keep on mountain-ing, not caring that you climbed it. And you’ll be busy looking for the next thing.

But that’s not bad news. It’s good news.

Think about every single thing that you crave. Every well-formed body you wish to experience, all the cookies, drink or illicit substances you want to stuff into your body. That new car, the bigger house. They’re never enough. As soon as the experience of having them is done, and the initial elation is over, you’re searching for that next thing. The better thing.


Nothing completely satisfies.


That’s the bad news.
 
The good news is that we can stop our frantic search for better.
What’s generally meant by being a better Christian is meeting the useless expectations others have duct-taped onto the Christian faith. Don’t watch those movies. Don’t read those books. Don’t listen to that music. Don’t go there, do that or touch that. I mean, don’t be an idiot, but don’t believe the lie that something is useless unless some religious nut condones it who thinks he knows how to live the Christian life better than you. (Col. 2:20-23)
 
A big part of why we have these rules—that are more preference than perfection—is because we want our faith to be about us.

Sometimes, when a community is raising money for something, they’ll put up a big sign with a thermometer on it, showing how much money has been raised towards the goal. That’s how most of us picture the Christian faith. Perfection is just hanging out at the top, waiting for us to get there. When we feel like we’re doing really well, we proudly show our thermometers to others with the insinuation that they should be more like us. When we’re aware of our failure to even come close to perfection we become discouraged and ashamed.
 

Perfection isn’t a scale, it’s a state of being.

 

You don’t get closer to it. You either are perfect or you are not. It’s not something you achieve every once in a while. Perfection has to be maintained non-stop. (Jas. 2:10)
 
So, you’ve got two choices in the religion game. You can follow the Law (which leads to death—2 Cor 3:6) or you can accept God’s unconditional acceptance.
 
What I’m saying is that you can’t do it. You can’t become a better Christian. Although, counterintuitively, in living a life of trust, walking by faith, you will start to look more like God because of His Spirit.

Besides, perfection was given to us because of Jesus. Now, getting better isn't the main point at all. It's having a relationship with the Father who ceaselessly sought you out.



Photo used under CC
3:20:00 PM
Christians are a worrying lot. One of the things we worry about lately is that our culture is becoming more secular. It is. You can stop worrying. While that will create some unique challenges for us, we’ll manage. But, that doesn’t change the fact that we are still really worried about this. And it’s not just the loons in the family this time. It’s the, ahem, respectable among us, too.

In fact, what stirred this up for me was this guy I respect a lot saying something that I didn’t really agree with. His comment, to me, is representative of a larger, wrong-headed idea about evangelism and dealing with those outside of the church.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It…

The comment was in response to the question of what he thought one of the greatest challenges we’re facing in evangelism was. He responded that we are talking past each other because our common ground is being lost. It was a quick response and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he meant something different. However, that doesn’t change the fact that this echoes the worry I’ve heard a lot lately.

Well, you might ask, aren’t we losing ground? Isn’t American culture slowly realizing that they don’t believe in God and that lack of belief means they also don’t believe in morality as God defines it?

The answer is yes, but…

…And I Feel Fine.

I’ve heard a lot of people lament the fact that we used to know that, at the very least, the vast majority of those outside the family of God shared similar moral beliefs as we. Now that’s not the case. So, they are deeply concerned that if we don’t have that moral common ground that we can’t even begin to talk to them about God.

But I submit that having common moral ground is beside the point.

I think the problem is that we’re focusing on the wrong things. We’re so used to the advantage of having some morals in common that we think we must have that particular advantage to talk to people outside the faith at all. It’s just not true. Because we’ve built up entire arguments based around those similar beliefs over dozens of decades doesn’t mean they’re the only arguments (or that they were particularly good in the first place.)

I simply don’t have to convince someone of my views on morality to talk to them about Jesus. We don’t have to agree on anything at all for me to talk to a fellow human being about unending redeeming love.

If Christianity was a philosophy, which we seem to believe it is, then we would totally have to convince the living heck out of people. We’d have to come up with different intricate arguments which we then used to counteract other’s dubious beliefs and make sure that we are well-prepared to give an answer for the totally logical argument we have within.

But it’s not a philosophy. Christianity is about a person. (Notice the prefix.) Jesus Christ. God among us. The Prince of Peace.

So, the idea that we are losing common ground is somewhat of a silly notion. At least, to me. I think it comes from a false premise, namely that we need some type of philosophical mutual understanding to talk to people about Jesus. If you want common ground—love without strings and sincere friendships are universal common ground, and I detest the idea that this would be considered a simplistic answer.

God’s Spirit and the visible love of Jesus on our behalf are plenty truth to go around.
If anything, I think it is in fact Christians who tend to lose common ground with Jesus.

(Live Studio Audience says, “Oooooh.”)

The conversation we have been very publically having with the world at large has been about morality, and not Jesus. Therein lies the problem. We have somehow confused what the Bible says with what we’re more comfortable with. We’ve made ethics an idol, when it is God himself who changes us by virtue of being in a relationship with him.


If you’re looking for common philosophical ideas, your boat is sunk. Thankfully, Jesus isn't even a little nervous.



Photo used under CC
9:00:00 PM
We think it’s about doing things. I mean, consider one of the most popular (I’m doing that quote thing with my fingers) movements of the last few decades: WWJD? Let’s be honest, that was about not lusting and giving it back when you got too much change, or not getting so angry at that horrible driver. That’s all good stuff to shoot for in life, but Jesus is so much bigger than you and I not being such a jerk. But, like that silly fad, we latch onto such things whole hog.

If those bracelets, shirts and lapel pins had any real power, the poor would find themselves better off, the outcasts would find a safe-haven in church and the world wouldn’t be shaking their heads at us about our self-righteous politics, but at our insane concept of thinking of the weak, disenfranchised and openly sinful as just as important as ourselves.

Our problem isn’t our desire to be better, it’s the poor reach of our imaginations. 

We can’t think past ourselves. We can’t seem to think past the socially unacceptable peccadilloes of our particular denominations or personal belief systems. We so focus on sin that we forget that it has been paid for in full by our God and what that means beyond our superficial worries about things like cigarettes and too-tight yoga pants.

It means letting God ridiculously love others through us who show no love (because we are loved even when we turn our backs on Jesus.)

It means allowing God to inspire generosity toward those who might not deserve it (because riches were poured over us at our least deserving.)

It means trusting God to provoke in us radical kindness to the most sinful people we know (because God was radically kind to us at our worst.)

Sometimes, we despise ourselves because of our sin. Other times we despise others in which we see sin. Neither is helpful or particularly Christian. When we see the weak-willed, the cheaters, the speakers of broken theology, the thieves and the sexually promiscuous, we shouldn’t then look away in disgust. We should see reflections of ourselves—those for whom Christ died. They should stir in us, by God’s grace, a great compassion that moves us to love.

We should ask ourselves what good it does to attack the non-Christians due to their sin? What becomes of the world if we change its laws to match our fastidious moral natures? That world fades and dies. A footnote in a long history of poorly chosen wars the Christian church has chosen to fight. But the men and women we love by God's power, without measure, those we forgive the unforgiveable (because that’s what Christ does for us), those whom we speak life into—now we’re talking about Eternity. 



Photo used under CC
9:00:00 PM
I was at a get-together the other night and someone asked if anyone else had the experience of feeling guilty and not being able to tell if it was true guilt or if it came from the years of the superficial guilt over everything we were indoctrinated with by the weak religion of our youths. It was one of those moments where my chest tightened with excitement and my eyes widened. It’s a struggle I’ve had for years.

 If you don’t know what I mean by this, I’ll try to explain. As a Christian, there are certain other Christians who—well-meaning or not—ground the idea of a petty and petulant god into your skulls. Things like dancing, certain (well, most) forms of entertainment, fermented beverages and not being a doormat wife made him quite huffy. So, having spent your formative years with that idea of God can make you neurotic about what’s truly a negative waste of time and what’s harmless fun.

I’ve come to question a great many rules in the last several years. I even went back and looked at the moral Law in the Old Testament, only to find that it was largely rules about treating neighbors respectfully, taking care of the poor and not cheating people in business—so, basically, love. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a demand for perfect love, but, nonetheless, love. Not the burdensome majoring on the miniscule that we’re taught is true spirituality.

I’m of the belief that asking the question, “Why?” can be a spiritual discipline. If you have some long-standing rule in your life, or if someone is attempting to put another log on the pile, simply ask yourself, “Why?” If you can’t come up with a suitable biblical reason, drop it.

It’s not up to you, anyway. There’s only one way to get to God and to gain his favor—the death and resurrection of his only Son, Jesus. The other way is perfect perfection, and none of us got that. The beautiful thing about grace is that what you can’t do, God finishes. We reach out in our piddly love and God extends it. We try to watch with him just one hour and we can’t even stay awake. But he does. And, because of that, we’re good. Jesus finished it on that cross and gave us hope for a future three days later.

In Between Noon & Three, Robert Capon writes it better than I can when he writes, “...there is therefore now no condemnation for two reasons: you are dead now; and God, as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, has been dead all along. The blame game was over before it started. It really was. All Jesus did was announce that truth and tell you it would make you free. It was admittedly a dangerous thing to do. You are a menace. Be he did it; and therefore, menace or not, here you stand: uncondemned, forever, now. What are you going to do with your freedom?” 



Photo used under CC.
10:15:00 AM
    Come, come, whoever you are.

    Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

    It doesn't matter.

    Ours is not a caravan of despair.

    Come, even if you have broken your vow 

    a thousand times

    Come, yet again, come, come.
                                                            -Rumi
          
10:18:00 PM
Copyright © 2016 Mister Preacher | By Designscrazed