Relevance and Reality ...

Real life.  Real problems.  Real questions.  Each of us face life everyday confronted by the realities of our situation, our heredity, our genetics, and our choices.  For Christianity to mean something to each of us, it must really mean something.  It must make a difference in our day to day existence.  It must improve our lives or it is not worth espousing.  Relevance; a real impact, making a real difference, seeing real change in us.  For too long, Christianity has been taught as a theory, a lofty ideal set down by forefathers none of us have ever met, in a time when the realities of life were much more simple and less demanding.  “They” never faced a world like we face.  And pastors who merely relay the testimony of the past to a generation in the future find ever dwindling congregations as the “real world” swallows the rote platitudes of well-rehearsed impersonal sermons.  Christianity must be REAL again.  We need to follow the example of Christ and become contemporary, become relevant.

Christ did not come to this world to be served, He came to serve us.  It would have been easy for the King of the Universe to simply accept the willing worship of His subjects, but this was not in His mission, or even in His character.  Christ did nothing to turn away our love and affection, but He also did not sit idly by on a throne of our construction and do nothing more for us.  No, instead if you wanted to spend time with Christ, you had to go where He was, and He was always WITH the people.  You could generally find Christ with those who were more than willing to spend time with Him; the poor, the sick, those in need, those who were outcast by society.  Christ did not turn away the rich who sought Him, but then, not many did.  The religious leaders only sought Him out to monitor his popularity with the people, and to guard their own positions of self-appointed spiritual authority.  Christ got into the dirt.  He walked the dry arid roads.  He drank at the public wells (fountains).  He ate with whoever invited Him to share a meal.  He was out there.  He was involved.  He was real.  He was relevant.

Christ did not sit behind weekly lecterns and give lofty idealistic sermons to show off His deep understanding of scripture.  Instead He used language His listeners could relate to.  He spoke to them in terms they could understand.  He told stories to illustrate His points.  He was patient with them.  He was careful with them.  He was love incarnate.  His messages were meant for a singular purpose, the redemption of His listener.  Every story, every counsel, every blessing, every prayer, all designed to bring His listener to the throne of grace to receive the wonderful gift He and His Father were offering us.  He brought us a freedom from sin we could never know on our own.  He was and is our Savior.  He made His words cut to the soul of man, deep in our inner core, to touch that image of His that lies within us all.  The problems His listeners faced, the issues and debates they considered, Christ had an answer for all of them.  He did not run from questions, He answered them.  He did not shy from interaction He sought it out.  His messages were not designed to bring glory to His own speaking ability, but to move the hearts of man to redemption.

A young man hooked on drugs could argue that Jesus never faced what He must face every day.  How can the church offer a repeated drug addict something more?  What does Christianity say?  Get a job?  Get your act together.  Find help.  Get clean.  Just say no.  How do we make Christianity real for the hard core addict, who seems not even to want to be different?  Christ faced this very situation.  No, I doubt He encountered a heroin or cocaine addict as such.  But He did encounter several who were demonically possessed.  Unable to control themselves, they would cut their own flesh, curse those who happened near, and attack any innocents they encountered.  These people had no more control over themselves than the drug addicts of today do.  They could make no “good” decisions.  Their minds were as warped by the demons within them, as are the drug addicts of our day whose minds have equally been warped by the chemicals they routinely ingest.  What do both have in common? - An absolute need of Christ, who ALONE can change not only their actions, but the desires behind their actions.  The drug addict can no more fix himself, than the demoniac of old.  They are both powerless to simply stop or say no.  They both need a creator.  They both need the singular God who ALONE can restore what NO ONE else can restore within them.  There is a message for the drug addict of today – Jesus CAN make you whole, and He wants to, and He will – will you let Him?

But then a message about the power of Christ is intimidating to some Christians.  “What if it doesn’t work?”  This nagging question lies at the root of all doubt.  But what good is a God who is unable to deliver on the promises He commits to?  What is it we call faith, if when faith is put to the test, we worry about the reality of our God?  How could a follower of the God of love believe that their God would actually desire a person to remain in slavery to drugs that warp the mind, and ruin the body?  No, it is the desire of God to free every single addict, as He once healed every single sick person in each town or village He came across.  None left behind.  None left to suffer.  All healed.  And every single drug addict we encounter in our world today can take hope in the fact that Jesus healed em all.  Jesus loved them all.  There was no one so far gone, that Jesus could not bring them back to life – even the dead.  Nothing was or is beyond the reach of our God’s love and desire to redeem.  We need not pray with timidity to find cures and fixes for the lost souls who wander in darkness.  It is time for them to see a great light revealed in our world, in our prayers, and in our actions steeped in love.

A pregnant girl, whose weakness now seems to threaten all her hopes and dreams.  A young couple whose ideas of marriage have hit the skids as real life is altering their perceptions of what should be.  A middle aged man who fears the next trip to the doctor’s office because he might hear the scariest words in the English language.  The unemployed, the poor, the downtrodden, the lonely; all those who feel the pain of the world in which we live.  He reached out to them all.  Christ had a message for each of them, and He still does.  Our lives can be better when we let Him change the core of WHO we are.  Our lives can begin to improve as we surrender our need to control, and learn that we can ALWAYS depend on Him no matter what we face.  Some things He will remove from us, some He will walk through with us, some we will never even know were headed our way.  But each day can be better, as we allow Christ the freedom to renew and recreate in us what must be recreated.  The pregnant girl can find redemption no matter her past, and strength to meet each day as it comes.  She is truly NOT alone, as Christ is with her every second.  The failing marriage can find a renewal of love steeped in sacrifice that inspires even more love from the partners.  The man whose health is in question can find not only healing of body, but peace of mind, hope in what lies beyond this mortal coil, and meaning in every day he lives between now and whatever end may come his way.  For we are all dying, it is only a matter of how and when.  Those in misery can find REAL relief, as each life sheds the evil and pain that comes with it.  Each and every life can be better because of what Christ does within us.

The Bible is a love letter from God to man.  Every story should be adapted to be useful in our current day to day lives.  Every precept, principle, and example both good and bad, should be used to offer real solutions to the questions put forward now.  The Bible is NOT a historical manual designed only to teach us where we come from and what we have gone through to get here.  The Bible is NOT a prophetic road map designed to show us where we are heading and provide us with a blow by blow description of every event that will occur until the return of our Lord.  Both the past and future are present in scripture, but scripture remains a LOVE letter from God to man.  Absent love, it is absent relevance.  Absent Christ, it is absent meaning.  Absent redemption, facts are useless.  Every prophecy was designed to show us the love of God.  Every event in our history, every miracle, every story was designed to illustrate to us in the real lives of the participants involved, the immediate love of God in action.  The same God who blessed Jacob, Joseph, and Solomon will bless us today.  The same God who worked through Esther to save a nation may work through you to do the same today.  The same God who trained Moses for 40 years tending sheep, may have similar ideas for you as well.  Each story was designed to show how God yearns to redeem each of us.

To find the relevance in the scripture for the lives we live, take a careful look at the villains in the stories.  God is tender with every single one.  He works with all of them.  He tries desperately to reach out to Cain, Pharoah, Esau, Saul, Ahab, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, the Pharisees, even Herod.   Their stories are recorded to show us that we have the ability to reject the love of God.  But they also remind us that each of us is offered the love of God.  Any one of them could have had an entirely different story if they were willing to repent, and submit to the love God offered.  The deliverance of the children of Israel was not needed in the lifetime of Joseph.  It could have been restored by the conversion of Pharoah to the worship of the true God.  Egypt might have remained the strongest nation on planet earth for years to come, had Pharoah abandoned his ideas about being equal to God.  The Pharisees could have had their positions of leaders of God’s religion restored had they simply acknowledged Christ as the Messiah.  The Romans or others under the influence of Satan would have surely fulfilled the prophecies of the death of Christ, it did not need to be the Pharisees behind it.  But alas, the villains are villains because they would not accept the love of God.

If the message of Christianity is to become relevant to the world again, as it was in the time of Christ, it must become relevant in the lives of its followers.  We can no longer espouse words, we must inspire observation.  Christianity must become a movement of real change and real difference in the real followers of Christ.  The new sermon is the sermon of example.  The new testimony is the testimony of action.  Christianity must be seen in us, the working of Christ in our hearts, attitudes, and lives.  If we are not the example of the removal of pain, then what is the point of our words?  Real hope is not found in self-discovery, self-enlightenment, and self-awareness – it is found in the death of self, and surrender to Christ.  A real relief from pain is found when God is allowed to change in us what must be changed, and what we have been wholly unable to change.  This is the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of relevance, and the beginning of relief.  It must be lived to be understood.

Chocolate Answers ...

Our quest thus far is to discover the meaning in our existence, to determine the nature of God’s goodness towards us, and to draw closer to Him beginning that relationship that will last beyond the boundaries of this simple world.  In this quest we pose many questions to God and wonder about what He must think.  We ask for things.  What happens when we get them?  How do we handle receiving an answer to our questions?  When an answer comes, what then?

It is somewhat easier to pose rhetorical questions than real ones.  We think we already have an answer to our query so all we are really doing is reinforcing a predisposed argument.  This is how, very often, scripture is interpreted.  We come to the Bible with all our predispositions, looking for texts that enforce our point of view rather than detract from it.  If we encounter a text we cannot easily explain, we write it off as a ‘mystery’ of the word and maintain our original theories without so much as a momentary pause to exhale.  This is unfortunate.  This kind of ‘closed’ mindedness when approaching the study of God’s word leads to the revelation of very little personal truth.  Our opinions are already in the way of our study.  The Bible is actually fairly self explanatory about most truths and when we allow for it to truly teach us, and truly answer our questions – it does. 

Most of the time, the problems we get into about the answers we get, is our dislike of what they say.  You see the revelation of truth to us, has to come in fairly small doses or it would overwhelm us.  We exist so incredibly FAR from perfection that the journey to it would seem impossible if we could see the end of the road from where we sit.  We would lose hope, give up, and resign ourselves to self-inflicted pain if we contemplated how much personal change is in our future.  But God does not share our negative outlooks and patiently begins working with each one of, showing us just a little bit of truth at a time, and helping us slowly begin to accept it, digest it, react to it, and finally embrace it.  Then we get the next piece of the puzzle.  How much of this work we go through in this world depends quite a bit on how we treat the answers we get.  Keep in mind this work is not to save us, it is because we are saved that we begin the process of living better and with less and less pain in our lives.

If on your journey, I told you for example that you had to give up chocolate from your diet entirely – how good would you feel about it in the short term.  Me not being a great big fan of chocolate, this would not be a huge sacrifice, but just the idea that I could no longer enjoy it under any circumstances would make me sad.   So what do we do with this ‘answer’ we just got about our lives.  After all, a change in diet hits us right where we live, and chocolate of all things (I guess now would be a good time to reveal this is merely an example – all you chocoholics can relax and eat another bite – your safe – this is just an analogy).  But to give up something we seem to like so much; that we take such pleasure in, seems hard to me. 

We might hesitate a little about this request (truth).  We might ask why?  We might not understand the ‘why’ answer.  So now what?  Do we try to comply, or do we write this request off, as a bit loony and decide God could not have really meant it?  But what if He did.  Finding ourselves eating chocolate despite declarations and intentions not to after some period of time seems likely.  Look at the process we go through for every evil we know we need to be rid of.  So it is not whether we find ourselves failing the truth we discovered again and again – it is about our recognition of the need to follow truth in the first place.  Our efforts to ‘obey’ God do count.  And our surrender of our will to Him, can enable the changes he wants to enact in our lives (even if it were to remove something we find so dear).  This accepting of truth and answers becomes important.

Sometimes the timing of why God asks different things of us is quite late in coming.  Take our chocolate example above; it could be that we have a very unique food allergy that will set in upon us in a few years.  We need to be rid of chocolate before this allergy takes hold, as one slip after it could literally kill us.  Of course we won’t know this fact until a doctor examines us a few years from today, but God knew about it now, and is helping us pre-plan now, to save us from ourselves at a later date.  Often God asks things of us for reasons we do not understand at the time, but are in fact for our good.  Remember, God is not arbitrary or cruel.  Evil is.  God would not ask you to remove chocolate from your life to ‘be mean’.  Only to save you from greater pain.  This is true about God’s motives for His answers to EVERY question we pose.  When you do get an answer, you can and should KNOW that it is for your best benefit.

Of course our friends and family may have a completely different view of the benefit of our truth on them.  If we were to give up chocolate and stop buying it altogether, eliminating it from our home, we might discourage other chocoholics from coming over to indulge.  We might risk friendships, offend other family members, etc..  But how bad would our family feel if after the truth of our condition were discovered, they realized their own part in encouraging us to eat and die?  Or how genuine are the friendships that are based solely on a behavior that will prove to hurt us over time?  Giving up chocolate is not something others were asked to do, it was only for us.  So perhaps we should respectfully follow our truth, and explain to our family and friends the reasons we must do so.  The witness to them in coming years may be HUGE if we hold to our guns now.  Keep in mind, following this example is only about self-sacrifice in our own behavior, we compel no one else to follow our own truth.

Sometimes we let logic get in the way of the supernatural.  Keeping with the chocolate example above; we would not have known the ‘why’ part of God speaking to us until it was too late for us to give up the habit we had formed.  Thus since chocolate is not on the forbidden foods list in the Bible, there is no counsel by Christ against eating it.  Logic dictates we should be fine eating it in moderation over the course of our lives.  This is purely a logical deduction based on all the facts we have at our disposal.  And therein we doom ourselves.  We rely upon facts we have at our disposal, instead of trusting a benevolent God who sees beyond our reach.  When faith and logic collide, trust faith.  Your vision is limited, God’s is not.  Your facts are not absolute, God’s are.  Even your motives are not always pure, but again, God’s are.  If it comes to relying on self, or trusting God – go with the winner every time – trust God, He has a better record.

After we find we have embraced the truth and answers God has given us, we seem to find ourselves in another common condition – ungrateful.  Amazing to me, that Christ heals 10 people from the deadliest and most contagious disease on planet earth at the time, and only one comes back to say thanks.  But look in the mirror, yup there goes one of the nine.  How many countless things has God saved me from, and how many have I truly thanked Him for.  But it gets worse.  You see my own personal tendency is to take the credit for victory over evil, and only marginally acknowledge God’s involvement in the process – of course until I crash and burn again.  Ouch!  How horrible and ungrateful am I?  How completely guilty of not following the humble example of the one, and instead rationalizing the behavior of the nine.  Time for a quick thank you note to God.  Yes gratitude is quite helpful for instilling and reinforcing humility.  And humility is the key ingredient to any real change in the character of your life.  Pride on the other hand, was the original source of evil, and a real show-stopper when it comes to giving up cherished habits that will prove our undoing and cause us real pain.

Here is some good news for you.  God knows your limits.  He knows what you are capable of hearing and processing in your life.  So if you have been granted a revelation of truth, count yourself blessed.  You are blessed with a truth you can do something about.  Like all other truth, you can consciously decide to embrace it.  To follow it.  To challenge it.  And to make it part of your existence.  This is the beauty of the answers we receive, they are not beyond our power to accept.  They are tailor made for us as individuals.  This also means that truth for you may not be intended for me, or intended for me yet.  God will bring me to truth as He recognizes my ability to accept it.  This is His job, and He will be the ONLY one who can be successful at it.  Answers are for each of us, not for ALL of us.  This is why our job centers on loving each other – not convincing each other.

I thank God for the answers to my requests.  I thank Him for the answers to my questions.  And I thank Him for the knowledge I am as yet unable to handle, because I know He will reveal it to me only as I am able.  It is so wonderful to be able to trust our God fully.  It is the reason we can accept answers that exceed logic and require faith.