What is the life of a Christian supposed
to look like? Is it Church services and Bible studies five nights a week? Is it
knowing the bible inside and out? Is it sinning less and less and less? Ummmm –
No - although many act as if that were true.
So many in America believe
their faith is to be an upward climb of some sort, leading to us sinning less
and being nicer and becoming more and more like Jesus, “every day, in every way”. They live their faith out, although they wouldn’t say it this way, as though if
they are good – God will bless them and when they are bad – God will punish
them. As someone has said, “That’s not Christianity – that’s karma.”
The message of the Bible is a
simple one of God’s radical grace toward a people that can’t keep themselves
from getting into trouble and constantly needed (and still need) to be rescued.
It is the story of a suffering savior, who lived His entire life in poverty,
and yet was richer than Bill Gates and Oprah combined. Jesus laughed and danced
and sang and turned water into wine and He knew how to have fun, but He also
suffered throughout His life. Not only the suffering he went through during the
day of His crucifixion, but all through His ministry we find Him weeping for Jerusalem or sweating
blood, or grieving for the hearts of those who would betray him and kill him.
He was a man that got involved in the work of God where He knew he should. He
did it better than we ever could, but the way He went about things reveals a
truth about life that is not preached in North American churches these days,
and seems to be understood much more in countries where people are suffering or
dying for their faith and places where you find the same “tired and huddled
masses yearning to be free” that the statue of Liberty has been inviting into
America for over 130 years. Part of life on this planet as a Christian is the
concept of self-induced suffering. We are called to love the unlovely and we
simply are too busy loving the lovely too often. It seems to me now that sometimes
the very same things that are Americas blessings are also one of the root causes
of the Church here developing a Christology that believes more in itself, and
it’s programs and sermon series than on the finished work of Christ to redeem
us. This paradigm revolves around seeking happiness and God’s blessing through faith
and obedience and when they are sharing in His suffering, it is looked at as
punishment. This should not be.
I certainly
don’t mean we all need to sell all our stuff and live as paupers, or even that
we should not be hopeful of God’s blessings for our lives. It means that we
serve a Savior who suffered, and whenever we do the hard work of the Gospel and
“get down and dirty” with real people about real problems and cry real tears
together – it hurts. You may sometimes lay awake at night with a burden for a
brother or sister, or a friend who can’t find peace but won’t listen when you
tell them about Jesus. You may wonder why God does things the way He does
sometimes and when your friend dies of cancer even with all the prayers you prayed
and tears you cried, and the hurt, and you won’t get any answer. You may even get
angry with God and curse Him out. You will suffer. It is a natural result of
being human in a fallen world. Christians in America need to learn that badly.
Some
reading this live in places where real suffering is going on right now, and may
even know people who have died for their faith. People they love may have
died for Jesus. These have hurt and cried the same tears of sorrow that Jesus
cried and most in the Church in
America
have never tasted. This reveals itself clearly in our selfish faith, that looks
more to the number of church meetings I’ve attended and how much Bible reading
I’ve done, than it does the work of loving people and caring for the hurting
ones He has placed right in front of us to gauge where your walk is with Jesus.
It is a faith more about getting people into pews than bringing Gods love from
the pews to the people who need it.
It is honestly
to the point that in some pulpits in America messages are preached where
there is almost an unspoken expectation that God will bless the lives of those
who are deemed to be “living for God” and punish those who step out of line.
This self-obsessed Christian faith is not the one Jesus America
from ten miles over any city/town/suburb - it would look like a field of stars.
Each star is a church, and the darkness in between would be the places the
Church doesn’t reach because too many Christians are all hidden away in their
“Christian” places, and are often heard grumbling among themselves about how bad things
are getting in the world.
taught or lived. In
fact, it seems to be exactly what Jesus railed against and accused the
Pharisees of in the Bible. Religion is now used as a tool to clean people up
and make good, decent citizens out of them. That is not a faith that centers on
Jesus. It is a faith that centers on us and our ability to please Him. True faith
in the living God will CAUSE us to put ourselves into places where suffering is
going on, because that kind of faith that understands that the darkness is
where the light is needed the most. If we were to look at a map of the reach
of the Church in
Remember - God
didn’t just call Jesus and the Apostles and the Church founders to share in his
sufferings. He called us all.
1 Peter 4:13
“13 But rejoice insofar as you share
Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is
revealed.”
Most of us in the Church in America have an
over-exaggerated opinion of the depth of our
own suffering. If we would humble
ourselves, and open our eyes to the depth of suffering in the world, and take
off our masks and see ourselves as the selfish lot we have become and
understand that we are all really just a bunch of frail hurting people who need
God and each other because we are desperate, needy, and unable to do anything
of lasting value on our own. Then we will look to Jesus alone to deliver us. When we truly understand how powerless and hopeless we are
when compared to our perfect God – as an individual or a nation - then and only
then we can be strong.
Paul said it wonderfully in 2 Cor
12:10 –
“When I am weak, then I am strong.”
Self-induced suffering in the life of a Christian does not mean we are called to beat ourselves up. This kind of suffering is a natural result of being in close relationships
with others and being involved in the lives of people with whom God has led you to. It is simply part of life as a Christian. When we see God’s love, and
how He suffered for us, it is only our own pride that would cause us to expect
anything different for our own lives. Plus it’s really not supposed to be about
us anyway, right?