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Church in crisis part 1
By mattb | September 11, 2008
I was in my group on Tuesday and we were going over the Spiritual pathway. The predominant sentiment in the group was that the spiritual pathway can be ‘taken too far’ and that we can ‘end up like those Muslims, praying on their mats five times a day’. The other concern, was that this pathway will lead us to a Pollyanna-ish attitude that will turn people off and be self-deluding. My immediate response was to turn to Jesus. God had supplied me with some wisdom earlier in the day in the form of Luke 7. Jesus is this guy who is deeply in touch with God and yet he is interfacing with people at the level of their pain and not with some empty prosaic theo-talk that leaves them with a saccharin taste in their mouths.
We have a crisis of Christians who are not looking at Jesus as their examples. They are defining their Christianity by what it is not. Jesus is not a blueprint. He is not an archetype. He is a human being that understand us at the level of the Word and at the level of the Word made flesh. Every pain we endure is a pain that he foresaw and built a capacity for. He knows how the anguish of losing a child feels. Every pleasure we enjoy is a pleasure that he planned. He designed the orgasm and has more insight into it than anyone every has.
So why is the church stuck on living such a stark life?
Well some reasons pop out at me:
- We like rules. We like rules because rules are easy. Red light means stop and green light means go. Jesus is not about rules.
- We like having problems. Problems are the currency of satisfying our appetites. People may complain about the state that they are in, but they are in that state because some appetite of theirs is being satisfied. Jesus is the ultimate liberator.
- We like being our own bosses. Even when you tell someone something helpful they often will rebel against it because of their pride. Jesus asks us to enter in a a relationship that lays aside ranks and rights.
- There are more, but you get the point.
Here is the question. How can we move people from a response of motion and a response of defining their beliefs by negatives into minute-by-minute, day-by-day, hour-by-hour encounters with Jesus?
Get back to me.
Topics: Uncategorized |
September 11th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Funny you should ask about that. There will be many answers, but here’s where I’ve been recently.
I think a HUGE part of getting people to see their faith in light of the positives (who God is, who we are, etc.) rather than in the cast of the negatives (who we are not, why we’re better than…) is helping them discover who they are in Christ. We throw words around like “saved” (ok, we don’t use that one much), “follower of Christ”, on a “journey with God”, etc., so often that they lose some of their impact.
For the women’s retreat, I collated a list of statements about who we are in Christ. We’re going to read it out loud together. It’s really powerful to put a voice to the amazing statements God makes about who we are when we are in Jesus. If we can challenge people to read a list like that, or to meditate on just one trait, I think their points of view might radically change.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
timely topic!
I was discussing thus with dale yesterday. I think Christians like to veer towards legalism OR lawlessness because they don’t understand grace. As an aside, by lawlessness, I’m referring to the attitude, I’m ok, you’re ok, Jesus saved me, so get off my back about disciplines cause you’re just being legalistic.
I was a great little legalistic Christian in high school. When I read Galatians, I realized that my works were in conflict with him. Scared to live without rules, I decided to ignore Paul. Eventually I learned about grace. Then, at first, I went the lawless route. Most of my funny dating and bar stories are from this time in my life. Finally, I started experiencing grace. And it transformed me. I strive to do good works now because I am so grateful to God!
So I think we need to get the message of grace across. Understanding the ridiculous, fabulous, too good to be true nature of the gospel gives us a solid motivation to do good and seek to grow.