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.



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Christian Life sanctification

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.



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culture witnessing

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. 

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Christian Life Moralism witnessing

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?” 

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grace law

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

          

Other People's Awesome

10:18:00 PM

I haven’t met a single person (including myself) that doesn’t think they have at least one aspect of life figured out. We generally go around rolling our eyes and wagging our heads at the behavior and words of others. At our jobs, at grocery stores, bars and church. If only they knew what we knew!

I do it all the time. I saw a lady coming out of Publix the other day, apparently healthy, young, beautiful and holding her very expensive purse on her arm as she pointed an elderly employee, who was pushing her very full cart, toward her fancy car. Oh, I had plenty to think and say about her.

I always know better. We all do, don’t we?

Christians do this to each other concerning theology too. Some worse than others, yeah, but we all think we’ve got at least one aspect of our faith pegged. And we search like a hungry lion for someone to correct.

I sincerely despise seeing this in Christians. It’s one my major pet peeves. I want to choke them out, screaming, “It’s about love, you moron! Love!” …Yeah, I know I have issues.

But it really is about love, you know?

John 13:34-35 says, “a new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (NIV)

(Also, to name a few more: Mt 22:37-39, Rm 12:10, Jn 4:7-8, Mt 5:44-45, John 15:12-13, Rm 12:8, etc.)

To be sure, the command to love is such an overwhelming part of Scripture that you’d think it’d be hard to ignore. But I do it every day.

Love, the bible says, is how the world knows we’re from him. (Not our goodness, it’s important to note.)

Knowing that not only are you loved, but the whole world (jn 3:16) is loved too means gives us freedom to interact with the lost. But we also have to understand that we aren’t going to the lost as those who are better than them, but sinners who’ve found God’s grace. To quote Luther, we are “beggars telling other beggars where they found bread.”

Jesus was known, because of his indiscriminate love, as a friend of sinners. If we’re not in danger of being labeled that too by the uptight religious sort, we’re doing something wrong. Because of God’s unlimited love, not only are we free to have dinner with prostitutes, it’s important that we do. Unconditional love reaches out to be friends with the sexually deviant, play cards with the drunkard, laugh with the inmate.

An understanding of our deep need of God’s love and grace lets us do that without an ounce of pride. It lets us see ourselves as no different than (dramatic music!) them! The only difference, to be clear, is that we already received the free gift which is also available to them.

If you need a little help with that last bit, 1 Corinthians 5:12 says, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the body.” That’s God’s business, the verse goes on to say. It does say, however, that we’re to judge within. But keep your guns in their holsters. Even that’s not what you might think.

Here’s the thing: We’re not anyone’s mother. When I see you going what I consider a little too far I don’t have to feel the need to correct you. When you say something I wouldn’t necessarily say, I can let it pass. Of course, if you come to me talking about cheating on your spouse, I’m going to tell you the truth. But my point is that I don’t have to correct your course in every opinion you have that I disagree with or every action I couldn’t imagine doing myself.

Let each other breath. We’re all imperfectly growing in Christ.

Love is the key to all of this. Doing to others what you’d have them do to you is a beautiful example of love in action. I don’t want to be talked down to. Check. Don’t do that to others. I don’t want to be shamed. Check. Don’t do that to others. I want to be loved unconditionally.

Check. Do that to others.

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God's love grace

4:33:00 PM

I don’t have anything to say. I mean, I can sometimes put something on a page that can make you feel or think. I can speak something in front of a crowd that you might take home. I’m pretty good at winning arguments. But that’s not the same thing. I’ve got no meaning. Not without something else. Another important ingredient.

The bible says something interesting about meaning, and it applies to pretty much every situation. It says that I can do everything right. I can feed the homeless, dress the naked, preach the good news and even die for my faith and it won’t mean a thing (nothing!) if it’s not done in love. It’s meaningless. Not less meaningful. Ultimately meaningless for us.

The bible says over and over again that life is about glorifying God. Any Christian who’s been to church more than a few times knows that our Salvation comes solely from God, not our works. They know that even our good works are inspired in us by the Holy Spirit. All praise, ultimately, belongs to God. But, you give us the smallest of reasons to take credit and we’ve gobbled up the whole shebang.

I want a pat on the back. I want the awards and the praise. I want to be recognized and thought of as wise and generous, kind and thoughtful. I just want to pay lip-service to God and secretly hoard it all for myself. I want, and I hate to admit this, religion.

Not that helping widows and orphans nonsense. The tit for tat, good news: Chad is awesome and much better than you sorry sinners religion. I hate that about me.

Capon wrote that God “wants empty vessels: preachers who have no religion left to preach.”

I want that too.

I really do. That’s the Spirit, by the way. I’d ignorantly choose the self-aggrandizing nonsense.

To do that takes total reliance on God. It takes reliance on him, not to clean us out like dirty pipes, Mario Bros. style, but to put whole new pipes in. You think that’s not scary? We’ve got our five-year plan and day-planner to think of!

He wants us connected to him permanently. And not as some integral part to the system, but as a conduit of his perfect love and grace. We’d screw it up. He finished it. He’s the root, we’re the vine. He’s the tree, we’re the branches. But, look, fruit! Connected to God, we become capable of doing that which we could never produce on our own.

So worth it.

When I stop thinking that kumquat of love is all me, maybe then I’ll stop acting as if I’m conveying a message to sinners whom I have nothing in common with. I’ll stop seeing the bible as a first-person shooter, where I’m the hero, blasting those wretched sinners, and realize I’m the wretched sinner. When I’m empty of all my rules-based religion, arrogant correction and unloving speechifying, I might have something worthwhile to say.

My voice will be softer and my eyes might not look so much like razor blades.

I might love the unlovely, the liars, the lustful and the ungrateful, because I finally see myself in their eyes and recall the Savior’s gentle forgiveness. 

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God's love Moralism

10:05:00 PM

“What is the author trying to say here?” I’ve heard that (and thought that) many times as a student. That phrase has ruined the fun of more than one book for many a person. The reason is because someone is trying to reduce the excitement, truth and downright joy of a book into a moral lesson. You ask most authors what they were trying to write about and they’ll tell you about the characters and the plot. Most authors don’t sit down to try and teach people a lesson. They just tell the story. The bible is much the same.

I was a really bad student. Looking back, I think it was basically due to my immense authority problem. I loved learning—I was always gathering up information about this and that—but as soon as someone told me I had to learn, I was scribbling drawings of superheroes in my notebook. I’m sure I’m not alone here. So, why do we do that?

The law ticks us off.

I grew up listening to the stories in the bible and, to this day, I don’t think I have a favorite bible story. I don’t have one that I recall fondly from my stay in Sunday School. They’re all neutral to me. That’s probably because they were always sold to me as some sort of moralistic puzzle. They weren’t just cool stories about warriors and miracles, they were grassy fields that I had to push through to find hidden meaning. I don’t recall them fondly because I probably never saw them as stories at all, I just saw them as work.

“What is the author is trying to say here?”

We want morals. We want David’s story of killing a giant to be about conquering that tough interview, getting through a Cancer diagnosis or our struggle with porn, with God’s help. We think of Noah’s story in terms of the bad people getting theirs and the good earning a place on the boat.

We never stop to think that maybe not everything has to have a moral, and that God is not one of the Brother’s Grimm. Perhaps all the stories collected in the bible aren’t to teach us how to be better people but rather that God is gracious and will provide a substitution, or that he’s just but has a stubbornly soft heart. Perhaps the bible isn’t just a book of stories from which we are to draw morals, but the narrative of a God whose love is greater than our sin, and is insistent upon our redemption.

In short, the bible might not (gasp!) be about us so much is it is about God. It’s a love story, but we’re the slovenly, cheating prostitute that he can’t help but love. He doesn’t, Pygmalion-style, teach us proper manners and how to pass as the highfalutin beauty as many of us think he does. No, we’re not to read into the Scriptures some formula to look, smell and act better. He comes to put our old selves in the ground completely, reviving us to newness. God’s story is much grander than some instruction manual. It’s the story of his pursuit of us in our evil, but it’s certainly not a story about how to be good.

The bible is the story of a patient Father who will not allow even death to stand in the way of his quest for his children. He will pass through death’s door, and kick it down for good, to be by our side. 

bible God's love Moralism

10:29:00 PM

God’s love is crazed. There’s nothing seemingly rational about the way in which God shows affection to his creation. When we talk about love, we throw all of these catches on, just to make sure nobody that doesn’t deserve loves accidentally gets some splashed on them. But, God, he turns the bucket completely over onto the undeserving and smacks the bottom.

I can’t help but think this is the kind of love Jesus is talking about when he says that all the law and the prophets can be summed up in a lifestyle of loving God and loving your neighbor. All of God’s commands are summed up tidily in the command to love. But not our kind of love. Not the kind that expects something in return or doesn’t give until it receives. It’s God’s love—the kind that breeds scandal and misunderstanding from those with their underwear on too tight.

Jesus told stories about God’s type of love. He talked about people showing up at the crack of dawn to work in the boiling sun getting paid a fair wage only to see the no-goods who showed up an hour before quitting time getting the same amount. He talks of parties where the important people are all too busy to show up, so anybody from any gutter, street corner or bar stool could come as long as they were willing. It’s crazy, upside-down, nutso world, where the least of these are the most of the these and the last in line find themselves getting first place while the first are standing on their tippy-toes just to catch a glimpse.

It’s a love that accepts us just as we are, soaking us to the bone with grace. Then we find ourselves whistling the tune. Doing a little jig to the music. Dancing and singing like we never thought we could. There is no comprehending the logic of God’s love. It doesn’t follow our broken rules. It sounds stupid to help those who can never help you back. It seems foolish to we criminals who worship justice. But to those who recognize that they’re withering away in this weltering world, it’s butter, baby. And it’s free.

God's love grace Jesus

8:55:00 PM

We lied to you. We sat in church every Sunday and we sang our songs and read from our Holy Book and forgot that you were out there, lonely and alone. We brought you booklets telling you how far away from God you were but left you hungry and homeless. We told you how hot hell was going to be for you but never told you that you didn’t have to work your way to Jesus.

We’re sorry.

We pushed you away with our self-righteousness and then blamed you for staying there. We said ‘I love you in the Lord,’ but we betrayed you by never showing you His face. We ignored your questions until you just stopped asking, and then we said you had a hard heart.

We were wrong.

We never looked in the mirror. We never thought that it could be us. Until now. Now we see. Now, we know that we are no better than you. Now we know that we can’t change you and that we do not have to. We realize that if Jesus can change us, then we don’t have to stuff our religion down your throats. We hope our apology isn’t too late. We don’t always look like the God we serve.

But don’t judge Him by us.

It’s not about you and us. It’s about you and Him. So, go to Him. Ask God if He’s there. Ask Him to show you the Truth about this Jesus. Because Jesus is the only Truth, the only good, we have. The only one that matters.

(by chad west and chuck slocum)

Christian Life church

4:53:00 PM