Before you even begin the undertaking of reading this massive thing, it's got to be said that even though I wrote this, all credit goes to Shane Claiborne and Joel Houston (among many others) for the language and the ideas to make it happen. enjoy!
I’m writing this because I feel like I’m trying to define the unknown and it’s not making the least bit of sense in my head. Since coming to California, in numerous ways through completely different mediums: a few books , several speakers, a friend who just so happens to be going through similar experiences, two documentaries, music, and a popular film - I’ve been exposed to the “gospel way of life” that’s turning everything I hope for, value and believe in upside down. In fact, it’s messed my soul up so badly that I am daily putting it off and choosing to be apathetic, bringing me to the place I am now – nothing less than a complete dirtball and feeling so far from God’s heart - and it’s all because part of me is crapping it’s pants in resistance to the sacrifices and all else to come should I fully allow the message I’ve received to take its toll on me. So from these words, I hope to put a face I can understand on what this new faith and lifestyle I’m feeling the need to embody really looks like, and to collect for myself every reason why I want this because I’ve realized it’s going to take everything to tear me from the current way I navigate life because my pride, my need to be valued and accepted by others, my self- indulgence fed by a culture of consumerism, and my lack of faith are all keeping me going with the flow of society, rather than getting out and stepping off the edge of the here and now.
Tozer puts it this way and right now my heart couldn’t agree more, "The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up on rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution".
Early on after I began to take the cause of Jesus seriously, I started to wonder if maybe at the core of nearly all Christian conversation lies the question of what this “relationship” with Jesus really looks like - here and now. With a peculiarly relentless desire to grow in God wisdom, so that I might even begin to grasp an answer to this overwhelming question, I started reading countless books and essays by Christian writers, listening to who knows how many sermons and podcasts, and taking part in oh so many conversations. And for the longest time, I must honestly say that I really thought I got it. Not like I had what it means to be a follower of Christ completely figured out (it seems to me like that’s an answer will forever be in constant pursuit of as we discover and re-discover deeper understandings of God and his love, forcing us to change and act accordingly), but more like I thought I understood the core of what this is all about. But now I’m questioning if I have entirely missed the point... Like there's a whole lot more to truly following Jesus that we choose to ignore.
I now recognize that my approach to the question of how Christians live was all too focused on me. I was entirely (key word here. I don’t mean to devalue the importance of these things) focused on my spirituality, and experiencing God and allowing Him to transform me back to the pure and holy being I was created to be. I was only preoccupied with the redeeming of souls from their sins that they might exit “the system”, and I was completely satisfied in this. And why shouldn’t I have been? I mean I was falling in love with and intimately interacting with the Creator of it all. That’s mind blowing in itself. And I could articulate it in the most compelling and attractive ways, and because of that, God was moving through me to bring revolution to the lives of others. But exactly what was I offering them other than an emotionally charged, spiritual Christianity and the idea of being used by God to see others rise up from “the system” and join in? I think Shane Claiborne articulates it best when he says that preachers were telling him to lay his life and sins at the foot of the cross and weren’t giving him anything to pick up. Like we are well aware of all the “don’t do’s”, but what about the “do’s”? The more I read the gospel’s, the more obvious it’s becoming that the true way of Jesus does offer something to pick up at the foot of the cross and I think it’s rooted in a cause driven faith that has as much to say about this world as it does the next. (More on this in Part 2)
So after two incredibly difficult yet unbelievable years, the fiery newness of this Christianity I’ve come to know is slowly dying out and beginning to taste stale. In turn, I’m experiencing a growing discomfort, arising from a longing for something more than the things I’ve been told to pursue. (Maybe there is truth to that saying “God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable” after all.) So maybe you’ve caught my general drift by now, but I’ve come to believe that we are no longer truly living out the Gospel of Jesus. And it's not because we don't earnestly desire to follow Jesus, but very much because our execution of that desire has become terribly distorted as we are found in our lifestyles of comfortable over-abundance, as we are bound up in the materialism of our culture which I believe stands in complete opposition to the lifestyle that Jesus as called us to. So stop here if you want, because I hope to back the clarity of this “gospel way of life” that Jesus has invited us into through the Scriptures, exposing the modern separation of our faith and action, by which you and I will be held accountable for because we will be judged according to our understanding of God’s purposes for us (Luke 12) - and amigo, this is certainly it.
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The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? … Dreadful it is to fall in the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament. –Soren Kierkegaard
Over and over in the scriptures, Jesus warns people of the cost of discipleship, that it will cost them everything they have ever hoped for or believed in – their families, their possessions, and their very lives. I mean the entire life of Jesus was marked by uncomfortable sacrifice. So we constantly talk and sing about sacrificing our lives, surrendering self, and becoming transformed into His likeness - that is as long as were still comfortable, and safe. We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. But if we do, are we really Christians? Are we really following Christ?
Collectively, the descriptions to follow don’t come anywhere close to answering the question of what the gospel way of life looks like. But I think they do represent a few important pieces to the puzzle. From which, hopefully you might join me in beginning to imagine and pray about what this looks like in your own life – because we are all going to respond differently… And that’s the freaking beauty of it!
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So we’ve been “born again” (as the evangelic jargon goes) into the dysfunctional family of Yahweh, marked by an incredible imbalance. And I can only imagine how this imbalance must break God’s heart (and maybe upset Him ... just a tiny little bit... ok I can only imagine it outright pisses him off). We've got to begin to grip with this great imbalance – the very fact that right now…
In this very moment.
Things aren’t right.
It’s not right that our generation is sitting around watching reality television, which to be honest is anything but real, while we have children being prostituted behind closed doors… robbed of their innocence. It’s not right that we can go on consuming every material option that comes our way, while the widow and orphan are stripped of life’s simple dignities because they are a victim of a conflict that simply isn’t theirs. It’s not fair that there’s a generation choking on their obesity, while at the same time there are 30,000 children who will die today because of lack of food. It’s not right that we have no problem spending three or four dollars on what is basically nothing more than glorified tap water while one life comes to end every fifteen seconds and entire communities suffer at the hands of disease because the only water they have access to is foul and polluted. It’s not fair that we can jump around and sing in our freedom, while the slave remains captive and hidden out of sight. It’s not right that we can turn on the evening news and see those affected by the storm or those in need because the earth shook and feel sorry for them, then flip the channel and get on with our dinner. And is it really fair that we can walk past the homeless man and give him nothing in assumption that he will spend it on booze or worse yet shout at him to “get a job”? I mean, who are we to judge the alcoholic or the prostitute or the addict or the criminal as if we are any better? Who are we to forget the marginalized, or the depressed or the down-trodden as we go on chasing “the dream” that never seems to satisfy?
We can’t help but recognize this imbalance and the reality that our world has never been so prosperous, yet never been so poor and feel sorry but so often that’s all we do. Why? Because doing something more is going to cost us something. And if that’s where it ends then perhaps the only fair thing is to say if we forsake the lives of others, we actually forsake our own.
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