The gospel way of life…
The gospel way of life is a life worth living even if there was no Jesus, no heaven, and no hell, simply because of the life, the matchless joy, and the fulfillment it offers.
The gospel way of life doesn’t just sprinkle a little Jesus on top and conform to the cultural habits that many believers have conformed to, but instead shows the world a different way to do life that stands in glaring contrast to that of dominant culture (Romans 12:1-2) - forming an alternative culture, just as Jesus and the early church did, that is not simply a counterculture reacting to the dominant culture, but an entirely new one who’s goal is equality. For if we aren’t people who are converts in the best sense of the word, who see conversion not as an event but a process marked by the renewing of our minds and imaginations, and the process of slowly tearing away from the clutches of the culture that are destroying us and our world, we have only believers, and believers are a dime-a-dozen nowadays. What the world needs are people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting now. (…Almost as if they read “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” not as some empty words that they supernaturally expect to come true, but words to enact)
The gospel way of life neither flows out of the prosperity gospel of health and wealth, or the poverty gospel, but out of the gospel of abundance rooted in a theology of enough. And after seeing countless rich people (ie. everyone of us.) so content in their riches that they forget they need God, and after witnessing plenty of poor people committing crimes out of economic necessity, I’m thinking we all ready for something new. Maybe you too will catch a glimpse of this way of living in Proverbs 30:8-9, which says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’” In this verse we hear a subtle echo of the Lord’s Prayer, in which we are taught to pray for “our day our daily bread”… not for me, but for all of us. This is also seems to be in tune with Exodus 16:16, which provides one of the first commandments given to our biblical ancestors (even before the big 10). It was to gather only as much as they needed for that day, as God rains down manna from the heavens and assures them that there will be enough. Yet they take more than they are told, so God sends maggots to destroy their stockpile. (…Maybe all we need is a few more maggots today)
The gospel way of life forever questions the sanity of our consumer culture because the Gospel offers a message that turns that social logic upside down (Matt 18:1-14) and calls us to become simple and elemental again. And because of which, is convinced that we are responsible for today’s imbalance and that God did not mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God, but by you and me, because we have not learned to stop talking about loving our neighbor as ourselves and actually do it – without limitations. (Leviticus 19:18) Gandhi puts it this way, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.”
The gospel way of life is about living simply and free of materialism, beginning with and rooted in a love for God and neighbor. Otherwise, we’re operating out of little more than legalistic, guilt-ridden self-righteousness. (However, even those who experiment in sharing may begin out of burden or guilt, but oftentimes soon find themselves being sustained by the matchless joy it brings and then operating out of totally different means). Simplicity is meaningful only inasmuch as it is grounded in love, authentic relationships, and interdependence. For as the scripture says, “If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere.” (1 Corinthians 13:3) Without these things (a love infection, authentic relationships, and interdependence) we can easily become enslaved to how simply we must live, just as we can be bound in how much stuff we need to buy, causing our simplicity to become nothing more than an ascetic denunciation of material things to attain personal piety.
The gospel way of life causes our lives to be set up in a way so that things won’t be alright if God doesn’t come through on his promise to provide because it embodies a reckless faith that is dependent on God like the lilies and the sparrows, constantly in need of the Lords providence - making the most room for the transcendent as possible by not worrying about missing out, or being preoccupied with getting, so that we can begin to respond to His giving. This vision of such a reckless faith is given to us in (Matthew 6:25-34) where we are told not even worry about food, the most basic need of life. Surely then we are not to be concerned with our clothes or any other image laden pursuits as this verse makes it painfully clear that there are to be no exceptions since no need is above food. It is when we live out this unconcerned recklessness, that we are truly free to be preoccupied with God affairs, “seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness”. (In the Hebrew the same word is used for righteousness and justice)
The gospel way of life does not see charity as a virtue, but only what is expected as followers of Christ. We have no right not to be charitable. And true generosity is measured not by how much one gives away but by how much one has left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbors. One of the fathers of the church, Basil the Great, writing in the fourth century, put it this way: “When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not – should he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry: the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked: the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot: the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute.”
The gospel way of life doesn’t simply regard the saying, “if you have two coats, you’ve stolen one from the poor” or (Luke 3:11), where it is said, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none” as a cute thought but a very fact of life and seeks every possible way to live it out.
The gospel way of life seeks to free itself from distant acts of charity (tithing, short term mission trips, tax-exempt donations, ect…), all of which accomplish some good, but they also have the tendency to function as an outlet that allows us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from poverty. So all though these ways leave both the rich feeling good and the poor fed and clothed, no one leaves transformed. Maybe that’s partly why Jesus didn’t seek acts of charity. Instead he sought concrete acts of love: “you visited me when I was sick and in prison…you welcomed me into your home…you fed me and gave me something to drink…you clothed me” (Matt 25:31-46). Jesus doesn’t ask us to give a check to a charity to feed and clothe and comfort others, he commands us to do it. (Maybe that’s because he is trying to keep us from falling into apathetic lifestyles that rob us from truly experiencing God’s grace and love.) Yet we don’t, because it is much more comfortable to write a check and depersonalize the poor, than to truly encountering the poor and truly feel responsible for the great imbalance and catastrophic human failure to do something about it that results in people sleeping on the streets while others have spare rooms. The modern day separation of faith and action has to be exposed and more importantly, it’s got to be mended. For as it says in James, “a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works”, and “The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.” (James 2:14-25)
The gospel way of life truly believes, as the apostle Paul figured out, that we no longer live, but only Jesus lives in us. (Gal 2:20) That means nothing I do is of me, it’s all of Him. And that nothing I have is mine, it’s all His.
The gospel way of life is about living with less so that we can give more. The Scriptures say that we can’t worship both God and money because “Loving one god, you’ll end up hating the other. Adoration for one feeds contempt for the other.” (Matt 6:24) Recognizing how often every person I know rarely, if ever, truly despises money, then it is surely a problem of our own. And if Jesus told one righteous man who’s problem was his attachment to wealth that “the one thing” he lacked was to “sell everything” and give to the poor (Mark 10:17-31), then why doesn’t that apply to us?
The gospel way of life doesn’t brush off (Matt 25: 31-46) as if it is anything less than a matter of salvation. (…The Scriptures seem to make it clear that it is.) Here Jesus tells us that ultimately we will be separated into two groups of people, sheep and goats, and the criteria will be how we cared for the poor, and not just the spiritually poor, but those who are hungry, imprisoned and naked. We have to stop passing texts like this and “contextualizing” them to show that we just need to be careful that our money doesn’t become an idol. Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey! Let’s be better stewards here guys!”. He says to give up everything we own and give to the poor. (Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22)
The gospel way of life is about storing treasures in heaven (Matt 6:19), recognizing that it is only an inheritance of the kingdom that is of true worth. It’s about living as if Jesus were coming back today, taking Him to his words in the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) where Jesus compares himself to a thief who is coming back soon and when least expected. And tells us to live with nothing stored up, giving it all away, because it will be of no value and have been wasted, having served no purpose in furthering his kingdom on earth when he returns and all physical things are no more. Jesus came and broke the legalism of tithing, and because of love turned the question, “how much must I give?” on its head into, “how much must I keep?”
The gospel way of life takes Jesus up on his invitation into a journey of downward mobility (Matt 18: 3-5), to be the least by identifying with and joining those at bottom - the outcasts and the undesirables, just as Jesus did. People found this kind of compassion and love magnetic in the days of Jesus and I refuse to believe that has changed for today. Maybe that’s because this kind of selfless love resonates at the core of our being. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that no matter how much we have, deep down we’re all poor and lonely – even those “who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly” (Romans 8:23).
The gospel way of life embodies God’s image of interdependence and sacrificial sharing, rather than independence and materialism. Survival with this kind of faith demands it. And I mean, who really wants to settle for a life of independence when we could experience the fullness of life in a sacrificially interdependent community? The more I experience community like this the more sense it makes and the simpler and more natural it feels. I wonder if the reason for that lies in the fact that we were made for community. In essence, the whole biblical story is one of community. Yet all this can’t be said without acknowledging that true community is not easy - “for everything in this world tried to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, and to choose independence over interdependence.” (Shane Claiborne)
The gospel way of life does not wait around for God’s special plan, but goes to find where God is at work and join in.
The gospel way of life believes that the best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away.
The gospel way of life is all about doing even greater works that Jesus himself. (John 14:12) “Very truly I tell you, all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the father.” (…Como say what?!)
And Above all, the gospel way of life isn’t about doing to be transformed; it’s about falling in love with God and being transformed through that, making it impossible not to live this way.
*****
So yeah… chew on that. Obviously these descriptions combined don’t come anywhere close to answer the question of what it looks like to be wholly surrendered to God (it isn‘t suppose to), they represent a few important pieces of the puzzle that we seem to have missed. Hopefully you are beginning to imagine and pray and consider looking further into the Scriptures and come to realize that this way of life seems to permeate them, and so that you may come to make sense of all these thoughts and begin to figure out how to react. Peace and love amigos! I leave you with this…
"I can't stand your religious meetings. I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice - oceans of it. I want fairness - rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want.” Amos 5:21-24
The gospel way of life is a life worth living even if there was no Jesus, no heaven, and no hell, simply because of the life, the matchless joy, and the fulfillment it offers.
The gospel way of life doesn’t just sprinkle a little Jesus on top and conform to the cultural habits that many believers have conformed to, but instead shows the world a different way to do life that stands in glaring contrast to that of dominant culture (Romans 12:1-2) - forming an alternative culture, just as Jesus and the early church did, that is not simply a counterculture reacting to the dominant culture, but an entirely new one who’s goal is equality. For if we aren’t people who are converts in the best sense of the word, who see conversion not as an event but a process marked by the renewing of our minds and imaginations, and the process of slowly tearing away from the clutches of the culture that are destroying us and our world, we have only believers, and believers are a dime-a-dozen nowadays. What the world needs are people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting now. (…Almost as if they read “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven” not as some empty words that they supernaturally expect to come true, but words to enact)
The gospel way of life neither flows out of the prosperity gospel of health and wealth, or the poverty gospel, but out of the gospel of abundance rooted in a theology of enough. And after seeing countless rich people (ie. everyone of us.) so content in their riches that they forget they need God, and after witnessing plenty of poor people committing crimes out of economic necessity, I’m thinking we all ready for something new. Maybe you too will catch a glimpse of this way of living in Proverbs 30:8-9, which says, “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the LORD?’” In this verse we hear a subtle echo of the Lord’s Prayer, in which we are taught to pray for “our day our daily bread”… not for me, but for all of us. This is also seems to be in tune with Exodus 16:16, which provides one of the first commandments given to our biblical ancestors (even before the big 10). It was to gather only as much as they needed for that day, as God rains down manna from the heavens and assures them that there will be enough. Yet they take more than they are told, so God sends maggots to destroy their stockpile. (…Maybe all we need is a few more maggots today)
The gospel way of life forever questions the sanity of our consumer culture because the Gospel offers a message that turns that social logic upside down (Matt 18:1-14) and calls us to become simple and elemental again. And because of which, is convinced that we are responsible for today’s imbalance and that God did not mess up and make too many people and not enough stuff. Poverty was created not by God, but by you and me, because we have not learned to stop talking about loving our neighbor as ourselves and actually do it – without limitations. (Leviticus 19:18) Gandhi puts it this way, “There is enough for everyone’s need, but there is not enough for everyone’s greed.”
The gospel way of life is about living simply and free of materialism, beginning with and rooted in a love for God and neighbor. Otherwise, we’re operating out of little more than legalistic, guilt-ridden self-righteousness. (However, even those who experiment in sharing may begin out of burden or guilt, but oftentimes soon find themselves being sustained by the matchless joy it brings and then operating out of totally different means). Simplicity is meaningful only inasmuch as it is grounded in love, authentic relationships, and interdependence. For as the scripture says, “If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere.” (1 Corinthians 13:3) Without these things (a love infection, authentic relationships, and interdependence) we can easily become enslaved to how simply we must live, just as we can be bound in how much stuff we need to buy, causing our simplicity to become nothing more than an ascetic denunciation of material things to attain personal piety.
The gospel way of life causes our lives to be set up in a way so that things won’t be alright if God doesn’t come through on his promise to provide because it embodies a reckless faith that is dependent on God like the lilies and the sparrows, constantly in need of the Lords providence - making the most room for the transcendent as possible by not worrying about missing out, or being preoccupied with getting, so that we can begin to respond to His giving. This vision of such a reckless faith is given to us in (Matthew 6:25-34) where we are told not even worry about food, the most basic need of life. Surely then we are not to be concerned with our clothes or any other image laden pursuits as this verse makes it painfully clear that there are to be no exceptions since no need is above food. It is when we live out this unconcerned recklessness, that we are truly free to be preoccupied with God affairs, “seeking first his kingdom and his righteousness”. (In the Hebrew the same word is used for righteousness and justice)
The gospel way of life does not see charity as a virtue, but only what is expected as followers of Christ. We have no right not to be charitable. And true generosity is measured not by how much one gives away but by how much one has left, especially when we look at the needs of our neighbors. One of the fathers of the church, Basil the Great, writing in the fourth century, put it this way: “When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not – should he be given the same name? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry: the coat in your wardrobe belongs to the naked: the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot: the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute.”
The gospel way of life doesn’t simply regard the saying, “if you have two coats, you’ve stolen one from the poor” or (Luke 3:11), where it is said, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none” as a cute thought but a very fact of life and seeks every possible way to live it out.
The gospel way of life seeks to free itself from distant acts of charity (tithing, short term mission trips, tax-exempt donations, ect…), all of which accomplish some good, but they also have the tendency to function as an outlet that allows us to appease our consciences and still remain a safe distance from poverty. So all though these ways leave both the rich feeling good and the poor fed and clothed, no one leaves transformed. Maybe that’s partly why Jesus didn’t seek acts of charity. Instead he sought concrete acts of love: “you visited me when I was sick and in prison…you welcomed me into your home…you fed me and gave me something to drink…you clothed me” (Matt 25:31-46). Jesus doesn’t ask us to give a check to a charity to feed and clothe and comfort others, he commands us to do it. (Maybe that’s because he is trying to keep us from falling into apathetic lifestyles that rob us from truly experiencing God’s grace and love.) Yet we don’t, because it is much more comfortable to write a check and depersonalize the poor, than to truly encountering the poor and truly feel responsible for the great imbalance and catastrophic human failure to do something about it that results in people sleeping on the streets while others have spare rooms. The modern day separation of faith and action has to be exposed and more importantly, it’s got to be mended. For as it says in James, “a person is made right with God not by a barren faith but by faith fruitful in works”, and “The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.” (James 2:14-25)
The gospel way of life truly believes, as the apostle Paul figured out, that we no longer live, but only Jesus lives in us. (Gal 2:20) That means nothing I do is of me, it’s all of Him. And that nothing I have is mine, it’s all His.
The gospel way of life is about living with less so that we can give more. The Scriptures say that we can’t worship both God and money because “Loving one god, you’ll end up hating the other. Adoration for one feeds contempt for the other.” (Matt 6:24) Recognizing how often every person I know rarely, if ever, truly despises money, then it is surely a problem of our own. And if Jesus told one righteous man who’s problem was his attachment to wealth that “the one thing” he lacked was to “sell everything” and give to the poor (Mark 10:17-31), then why doesn’t that apply to us?
The gospel way of life doesn’t brush off (Matt 25: 31-46) as if it is anything less than a matter of salvation. (…The Scriptures seem to make it clear that it is.) Here Jesus tells us that ultimately we will be separated into two groups of people, sheep and goats, and the criteria will be how we cared for the poor, and not just the spiritually poor, but those who are hungry, imprisoned and naked. We have to stop passing texts like this and “contextualizing” them to show that we just need to be careful that our money doesn’t become an idol. Jesus doesn’t say, “Hey! Let’s be better stewards here guys!”. He says to give up everything we own and give to the poor. (Mark 10:21, Luke 18:22)
The gospel way of life is about storing treasures in heaven (Matt 6:19), recognizing that it is only an inheritance of the kingdom that is of true worth. It’s about living as if Jesus were coming back today, taking Him to his words in the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) where Jesus compares himself to a thief who is coming back soon and when least expected. And tells us to live with nothing stored up, giving it all away, because it will be of no value and have been wasted, having served no purpose in furthering his kingdom on earth when he returns and all physical things are no more. Jesus came and broke the legalism of tithing, and because of love turned the question, “how much must I give?” on its head into, “how much must I keep?”
The gospel way of life takes Jesus up on his invitation into a journey of downward mobility (Matt 18: 3-5), to be the least by identifying with and joining those at bottom - the outcasts and the undesirables, just as Jesus did. People found this kind of compassion and love magnetic in the days of Jesus and I refuse to believe that has changed for today. Maybe that’s because this kind of selfless love resonates at the core of our being. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that no matter how much we have, deep down we’re all poor and lonely – even those “who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly” (Romans 8:23).
The gospel way of life embodies God’s image of interdependence and sacrificial sharing, rather than independence and materialism. Survival with this kind of faith demands it. And I mean, who really wants to settle for a life of independence when we could experience the fullness of life in a sacrificially interdependent community? The more I experience community like this the more sense it makes and the simpler and more natural it feels. I wonder if the reason for that lies in the fact that we were made for community. In essence, the whole biblical story is one of community. Yet all this can’t be said without acknowledging that true community is not easy - “for everything in this world tried to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, and to choose independence over interdependence.” (Shane Claiborne)
The gospel way of life does not wait around for God’s special plan, but goes to find where God is at work and join in.
The gospel way of life believes that the best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them away.
The gospel way of life is all about doing even greater works that Jesus himself. (John 14:12) “Very truly I tell you, all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the father.” (…Como say what?!)
And Above all, the gospel way of life isn’t about doing to be transformed; it’s about falling in love with God and being transformed through that, making it impossible not to live this way.
*****
So yeah… chew on that. Obviously these descriptions combined don’t come anywhere close to answer the question of what it looks like to be wholly surrendered to God (it isn‘t suppose to), they represent a few important pieces of the puzzle that we seem to have missed. Hopefully you are beginning to imagine and pray and consider looking further into the Scriptures and come to realize that this way of life seems to permeate them, and so that you may come to make sense of all these thoughts and begin to figure out how to react. Peace and love amigos! I leave you with this…
"I can't stand your religious meetings. I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice - oceans of it. I want fairness - rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want.” Amos 5:21-24
Blair, once again... bravo. I love that I was able to sit here and read this with my Bible open, and actually feel like I'm being taken through a Bible study or devotional. It really has made my day.
ReplyDeleteA few thoughts I had while reading this:
--When I came to your reference of Matthew 18:1-14 regarding the little children that Jesus calls to himself. I have heard this passage preached on many times, many different sermons and speeches alike, etc. But I think there is more to it than Jesus just calling us to be "simple-minded" or "elemental" like children. I actually don't really think this is what he meant at all. Consider this: children in those days were considered the very least in society. In most cases they were burdens because their families had to provide for them, which was often very difficult to do. And at very young ages they had very little, if anything, to contribute to the whole of community, therefore they were often considered less valuable even than cattle, because at least cattle had a purpose. So what I believe Jesus was really saying, is we must become like little children in that they are the "least of these" so-to-speak. They are the very least and we cannot enter the kingdom of God will all of our self-important agendas and inflated social-statuses. For the kingdom of God will be given to such as these, those deemed unworthy and undesirable. Those on the fringes of society because our God is one of great compassion and love, and this is where is heart is bent toward.
But what do you think?? Would you agree? Disagree?? :)
--Loved your commentary on Matthew 25:31-46. Such good stuff!
--Also, just a little error I came upon... you quote Romans 23 near the end... but alas, there is no Romans 23... I am pretty certain, however, that you are referring to Romans 8:23. Anyway, just thought you might wanna know.
Great work, thank you for sharing. Your words really are edifying. So I am glad you have finally decided to share them with a larger community. Blessings my friend.
hey Cayla, thanks much for your insight and for the heads up on that Romans 23... never really been a fan of proofreading.
ReplyDeleteas for your thoughts on Matthew 18, I totally hear what your saying. I actually use Matthew 18:3-5 in one of the last few parts (should probably move the two parts closer together) to say much of the same - that the gospel is an invitation to downward mobility to be become the least - just nowhere near as elaborately as you. thanks for that.
After reading these words, "they were often considered less valuable even than cattle, because at least cattle had a purpose", it became heavy on mind just how freaking weird Jesus was and is, and just how different life in the kingdom of God is from how we normally navigate life. ...and then I get to thinking how often I'm so, normal.
I'll have to reconsider the whole simplicity idea coming from that verse.
peace and love -blair