"I just want to be comfortable"

You may not even be consciously aware of this, but if the Christian faith to you is a lifestyle you’ve missed what the faith is intended to be. Christianity is not a lifestyle. In fact I loathe that word lifestyle. It reminds me of that new movie out called the Joneses. That is a lifestyle. Christianity is not. It is a distinctive and radical call on a person’s life that should speak to the depths of who we are. And that call is scandalous in its particularity. In fact there’s a term called the scandal of particularity and it’s about Jesus Christ. And I’m sure many of you have heard, perhaps everyone here, of the audacity of the Christian faith to claim that one person who lived two thousand years ago is the only way to God. That’s the scandal. Yet somehow we know this scandal and somehow we expect that Christian life to mean something to us without giving it attention through meditation and solitude, allowing it to indwell in us, and it becomes a drag, remaining something outside ourselves.

Well it’s time for us, for you, to start paying attention. It’s time for us to wake up! We’ve been asleep too long!

Believe it or not, we are by nature idolatry making, carbon base life forms. We are prone to making idols of things. And maybe you’ve heard idolatry talked about in church, but sadly I think we all too often miss our most grievous form of idolatry, which is the way we idolize God. We have this tendency to objectify God by making him out to be a series of rules, as though he’s something we can control. Why? Because it is far more comfortable and easy to love something you can control . . . as bastardized a version of love it may be.

So we resort to Christian euphemisms and easy answers. We domesticate the transcendent. We tame God. So that in some way, we think we can ultimately control the outcome of our lives, as if God will somehow always be there to predictably do exactly what we want him to do. The problem with this is that the more we idolize God, that is the more we turn him into a object, the less able he is to love you. And the less able he is to love you, the less able you are to love him. And the less able you are to love him, the less able you are to love others. And the less able you are to love others; the less able you are to love yourself. And the less able you are to love him, self and others, the more of a shell of a person you become. It’s an eternal digression. And when we fall prey to this tendency of controlling God Karl Marks right! Religion becomes an opiate. It makes us feel better. Isn’t that what it’s about? Feeling better? No! In fact just the opposite. It’s about sacrificial living. Otherwise there’s no reason to live.

So we fall prey to this and Christianity then becomes something akin to afterlife insurance, allowing you to live effectively the same life as everyone else. And after a year at a Christian institute, I think this is the danger of any Christian school, that instead of being in the world but not of it, we become of the world but not in it. We entirely reverse the call. That’s the danger.

You’ve heard it said and maybe you’ve said it yourself, “I just want to be comfortable.” That sentence is the one sentence no Christian should ever say. That sentence, is the kiss of death. That sentence, “I just want to be comfortable”, you will hear it no place from genesis to revelation. No place at all.

Jesus didn’t say on the cross, “My God! My God! … I just want to be comfortable.” He didn’t say in the garden of Gethsemane, “Oh Lord, not my will but Yours ... just as long as I can just be a little bit comfortable. He didn’t say to the rich man, “sell everything you have and give it to the poor… well not everything, but you know as long as you’re comfortable. And go and follow me!” He didn’t say it to the disciples. And as far as I’m aware it is no where it Paul’s letters.

I just want to be comfortable is a euphemistic way of saying, “I just want to be lukewarm.” It is a substitution of an agreeable and inoffensive expression for one that offends and suggests something unpleasant. “I just want to be comfortable.” It’s not the message of God. It’s the message of the devil. Comfort is satanic.

There’s this quote I’ve come to live by that says, “God comforts the discomforted, and discomforts the comfortable.” Experience has taught me this to be truth. And should you choose to open yourself to suffering I imagine you too will experience the same. But should you choose otherwise, just know that if you find yourself comfortable in the faith, there’s a good chance you’ve stopped growing. “…I just want to be comfortable…”

You guys, God wants us to live lives of vitality, of courage, and of sacrifice. Just look at the people in the Old and New Testaments who we now consider the great followers of the Lord. Moses, called to lead his people and have a nice little chat with Pharaoh. Something no sane person would do, but he does it anyway, risking his life because God has asked it of him. So with unbelievable audacity he tells the Pharaoh to release the Israelites. He commands him to give up the majority of his economy. And he stutters. And then there’s David. Or how about Peter, or better yet, Paul, a once was terrorist against Christ until he was forever changed after an encountered God on the road to Damascus where he was told to preach to the very people he persecuted. Think that was comfortable? Or Noah, a guy who likes to get drunk and naked yet for some reason God choose him to bring forth his people. What was God thinking? Was he running out of choices? No! He wasn’t! Apparently God prefers people who sin boldly. Now please, listen close here because this could be misunderstood in the wrong ears. I’m not suggesting that you sin boldly… Martin Luther did! But I’m not Martin Luther.

But the thing is, apparently God has something to work with when we sin boldly, when we are people who don’t play it safe, when we take risks for his sake. God doesn’t know what to do with people that are comfortable. He doesn’t know what to do with people who are lukewarm…well actually he does, and it’s rather disturbing.

In the fabulous book, “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis, Screwtape, the senior devil is writing to his junior devil, Wormwood, on how to damn his patient. That’s what they call each person. And again, and again, and again, they’re trying to damn their patients unto hell. And constantly Screwtape is saying to Wormwood, “NO! Don’t do anything dramatic. The slow and gradual road to hell - no sign posts, no sudden turns, nothing tragic; that’s what we want! Have them say things like, ‘everything in moderation.’ That’s what we want. Have them go to church and sing songs, and you know, have them say things and feel things as much as they want.”

In fact, C.S. Lewis had this picture of sin and it was three concentric circles. The outside circle was your feelings, the second circle was your thoughts, and the inner circle was your will. And Lewis suggests that the devil will kindly clear the way for us to lay down our lives at the foot of the cross. “Let them give the outer circles to God, their thoughts and their feelings. Just absolutely let them pour it on! Lay down your lives at the foot of the cross. Fill your thoughts and feelings with those of God! Admire and worship Jesus!” . . . Preaches the devil. “Applaud what he taught and stood for” . . . goes the devil’s chorus! “Just please oh please,” he cries so sweetly, “just don’t goes as far as to do what he did. Don’t take his radical words seriously. Don’t learn that you’re called to live by faith, and to suffer, and to die for the sake of Love.” In other words, just don’t figure out that all the devil wants is your will. He only cares about what you do. Not what you say, not what you think, not what you feel, but what you actually do.

And so Screwtape is constantly giving Wormwood fabulous advice about how to turn people away, and I can almost wonder if God would prefer someone who says things like: “I want to be filthy rich, I want to live on a beach in Malibu, I want to have lots of money and be famous and have people adore me.” Because at least then there’s a chance that they will hit the wall. Realize they’re completely broken and fall to their knees and be redeemed. But comfortable? You could die comfortable and never be redeemed. That’s the problem with comfort. It’s like long, slow, euthanasia. It’s a good, slow death. And you die long before you ever hit the grave.

In the scriptures, Paul calls us, the body of believers, the New Ishrael. In Hebrew the word Ishrael literally means: “Ish”, human; “Ra”, fight; “El” God. It’s rather fitting considering our human condition and that’s why Jacob’s name was changed to Ishrael when he wrestled with God. So we are the New Ishrael and the implications are so deep.

(This one’s for you Sam) Guys, this is like the spiritual UFC! We’re supposed to wrestle our way, to God. Sanctification, or call it the process of conversion, the process of conforming your will to God’s, is very unpleasant. It’s the process of learning to how to let God love you and it’s the single hardest thing for any Christian. Not how to love God better, but how to let God love us better. That’s way more costly. It’s hard! And it should be difficult. It’s supposed to be. You were called into difficult living. But at the same time, it will rock your world. And I’m not talking about feelings, it can and will rock your feelings and that’s fine and good to some extent. But it’s a terrible disease to think that Christianity is all about having your shit together and being happy because sanctification will rock your world in ways you don’t want it to rock your world. He will literally clean your house, which includes your wallet; turning your ideals on their head.

And I can understand why some of you, trust me I was there too, who don’t understand this think it’s hip to be rebellious. You know, go smoke hookah, and want tattoos. But you know what I’m talking about, you do your thing. You do whatever you can to show that you’re over or not really into this Christian thing. I mean maybe you think it’s so kind of neat and whatever, but really? Come on. I’ve got life to live man! I’ve got halo to play, and flicks to watch, chicks to bang, ganja to smoke and time to waste, people to impress, things to buy.

Well I tell you what, if it was all about being nice, and being behaved, and well mannered, I’d be sick of it too! I have no interest in that. But if I’m going to follow Jesus Christ - a man who grew up no different than you and me, walked the earth, said some really funky and extremely threatening things, only to persecuted for it and die a peculiarly uncomfortable death, and then defy the grave on the third day – Como say what?! Man there’s nothing uninteresting in that at all. The way of Christ, the gospel way of life if you will, is utterly radical. Just listen to him as he equates your thoughts with the very action itself. Go! Sell everything and give it to the poor! To live is to die, to die is to live! Consider your life worthless for the sake of others! Love your enemy!

Faith is either radical or it’s nothing at all because Gods love is overwhelming and you don’t respond to God’s love with a moderated, “Oh ok, yeah, ok, sure.” It’s either radical or it’s nothing at all. The Christian faith is not open to a mediated response. You’re either all in or all out. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t doubt or are always happy. In fact, the deeper you go in your faith, the more you will embrace doubt as your ally.

Yet so many of us have managed to dumb down the gospel; to gentrify it. And by many of us I mean the vast majority of all American, self-proclaimed Christians, including pastors. America has turned the gospel into a moderated Christianity.

So get this, you will never leave the faith because you’ve disproved it; you’ll leave the faith because you’ve grown tired of it. We fall back into sin and materialism not because of some dark impulse, but because we’re just tired. We’re tired of believing if you pray from something, somehow it’ll happen (which in case you are unaware, is not how things are). So you know, we pray for someone to get better and then they die. Or to take it home, you pray for your mom who’s battling cancer, and then she dies. Or we commit ourselves to prayer about our parent’s relationship and then it breaks off and they hit you with news of a divorce. And we pray about something we’re suffering from or struggling with and it never seems to get better. And at some point, if we’re honest with ourselves, and we’re not distracting ourselves with the endless little gadgets we all have, we become tired, it’s a spiritual exhaustion that causes us to wonder what‘s the use, and ask, “is this really all there is?” Because it feels so often like a lifestyle – something voguish and superficial. It’s almost as though it’s a club. Or if you go to younglife on Monday nights it quite literally is, as the name suggest, a club where we all get together and play a few games and then wink wink, nod nod, yeah!, Jesus Christ is great, mmhmm. Isn’t that fabulous? Yeah! God is good… All the time.

Sin, is spiritual exhaustion. And sin is not naughtiness, it’s tragedy. Sin is not naughtiness. It’s tragedy. This idea isn’t supported by any moral base arguments; you can’t get or not get this. It just has to soak into one’s psyche. It’s tragic. It’s tragedy. And too often I think we give sin a bad name because we tend to think otherwise.

So often we hear things like, “don’t sleep with anyone before you’re married. Don’t objectify women and look at them lustfully. Oh, and pst! Now I know this is awkward and embarrassing and everything … but don’t masturbate!

Do you see what I mean? We generally treat sin as thought it’s naughtiness. But it’s not naughty to do any of those things. It’s tragic! Why? Because it breaks down the whole purpose of what it means to be intimately connected with God and other people.

So back to C.S. Lewis’ idea of sin. We give God our hearts and our minds, yet somehow our wills are still tied to sin. This past semester a professor told me, “if you want to know what somebody believes, watch how they live. Don’t listen to what they say. Watch how they live. Chances are you won’t see too many people jumping off two story building just to sort of test gravity. We all believe in it. So we don’t do it.” So you want to know what you believe? Watch what you do. Watch how you live. That’s what you believe.” Faith is manifested in action.

You guys, if we want to learn how to live the life we were created for, if we want to live the way we are, then we have to take God out of the little boxes we’ve put him in. We have to stop fooling ourselves that we’ve got God figured out, as though he is some little thing we can just put on the shelf over here and not pay attention to, or at least only when we feel like it. Or, maybe it would be more realistic for me to say that some of you just need to find a box to put God in the first place. But in either case, we have got to recognize and embrace the mystery of God. And by that I mean all that we do not, and will not, because we cannot understand or completely explain and rationally make sense of. And once you’ve got that, once you come to terms with the fact that the mystery of the Christian faith is not one you solve, but one you meet; and once you realize that you can’t control God or throw out easy answers to difficult questions; then you have to start paying attention. And not just Him, but to yourself and others as well.

So if you get anything out of this, get this. You have been called into difficult living. It’s the world that wants you to be comfortable, not God! God wants you to live a life of vitality. He wants you to have a life that has meaning, and purpose, and substance, and direction. Your friends, your family, the vast if not the entire majority of the people you interact with, or see on TV, or listen to on your ipod’s want you to be comfortable. Jesus Christ doesn’t. And it’s not because he’s a kill joy. It’s because it’s the only way to joy. And if you are among those who think the Christian faith is about behaving and being sweet and well mannered and nice and all of those things, I am here to tell you that that’s wrong! That’s not what it is. If you ever grow tired and spiritually exhausted out of boredom of the Christian faith because it means you don’t understand it. It means it has quite gripped you yet. It means you haven’t yet gone beyond having a crush on Christ and you need to get over it because you can’t actually love something until you’ve fallen out of love with it. This is going to sound weird guys, but God wants you to fall out of love with him. Because in order to be in love you must first fall out of love and falling out of love in a relationship means it’s just about to get real.

So in the end, we are all going to get burned. The question is whether or not we will let the Gospel burn us up here and now and then heal, or whether we will opt to burn in the fire of hell. So here’s my question to you, and I’m ending on this - Will you simmer in a moderated faith of comfort for the rest of your life, or will you suffer and live sacrificial lives for the sake of others and in doing so actually be a servant of the gospel?