How to be a Christian

Every Christian I know has at some point wondered whether they were doing it right.

We wonder whether we are doing the right things, praying enough, giving enough, committed enough, sinning too frequently, going to church too infrequently, going to the right church or the wrong church with the right doctrine or wrong doctrine, whether we loved their neighbor too little, and on and on.

It's sad that so many of us live under that pained confusion, not ever really embracing joy, actually feeling quite burdened about all we believe, but it's not surprising. 

We're the first Christians to ever have lived in the 21st century. We can read all that we want about the people who came before us, but they didn't live in our context. Some things will be the same. Much won't be.

We're also the first Christians to have unlimited access to everyone else's thoughts, all the time. We're exposed to hundreds of voices declaring that they've finally figured out exactly what Jesus would think, all the time. We're reminded over and over that even when we think we're doing pretty good in our faith journey, someone thinks we've got the whole thing screwed up.

I had a conversation with a friend recently who mentioned that he was preaching through a particularly difficult Old Testament passage, and before preaching it he knew that he was going to have a handful of young fundamentalists who were going to tell him that he didn't preach enough about the law and God's holiness and how God should slay us all in our path. It's no wonder that we feel conflicted, like we're messing up. What if those young fundamentalists are right? What if our primary way of approaching God should be in fear, as if we're one wrong move away from getting the lightning bolt? One misstep away from his wrath?

That fear–the fear that God is just waiting to catch us screwing up–is not just the fear that keeps the religious-types devoted, but it's also the fear that keeps the wayward from coming close. For every believer who comes to church with a scowl because they are pretty sure that's what God wants from them–unadulterated, pure, religious dedication–is another believer who avoids it because they just feel like they don't measure up.

Both the Pharisee and the Tax Collector are invited into the family of God because of the Gospel.

This is why the Gospel is about freedom. The Pharisee needs to be freed from the massive burden of self-righteousness, and no little amount of self-doubt, that comes along with believing we have to earn our credibility before God. The tax collector needs to be freed from the burden of knowing that he can't measure up, or is somehow kept at an arms length from the true kingdom. The Gospel doesn't agree or disagree; it actually provides a whole new framework. It's no longer about you. It's about Jesus.

The more we can embrace that freeing thought, the more we'll simply be Christians. No heavy burdens. Just resting in what Jesus has done.

Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love

Annual "Christian" events are tough when you are a preacher. Christmas, Easter, Good Friday...everyone knows what you are going to preach on.

I remember one Easter Sunday back when I was a kid when the Pastor preached on something from the Heidelberg Catechism. My mom was ticked. Jesus rises to life and we open the dead catechism.

In any event, it also means that I spend more time thinking about the events themselves. What is fresh to me this year? What is new that I can share?

Our advent series in 2014 is called "the Canvas". The idea is that our lives are a canvas upon which and through which God is going to paint the story of salvation. He is going to use our very lives to demonstrate to the world what life in his Kingdom looks like; what faith looks like. I'm beginning to notice a theme as I consider the four topics of advent–hope, peace, joy, and love–and it's not necessarily an encouraging one. The theme that these traits have in common is that they require a corollary to truly be seen.

That is, if God's going to paint a picture of Hope on the canvas of your life, he's almost always going to do it by walking you through a period that would otherwise be hopeless. You have to need something or desire something to have hope. And it can't be something that is easily attainable. It's almost always something that is out of reach. "Who hopes for what he already has?", asks Paul in Romans 8. If you already had it, it wouldn't be hope. Which means that if Hope is going to be painted on your canvas, it's probably going to require that other things are stripped away. Most of that stripped-away-stuff is related to false hope; it's the stuff that might fool us into believing that something else can save us. Our money, our relationships, our comfort, our health, or whatever. When all of that is gone, why does the Christian still have hope? Because our hope is not in the temporary or the fading, but in the unchanging and unfading and unfailing God of the universe. Hope usually requires calamity if it is to be clearly seen.

Peace requires turmoil.

Joy requires trial.

Love requires the unloveable; it's seen most clearly when we love our enemies.

But then salvation requires a baby and forgiveness requires a cross and life requires death.

The Lion Aslan told Lucy and Susan that when a willing victim took on the death of another, the stone table would be cracked (the law) and death itself would begin to work backwards. I guess that's our story now. Everything is being reversed. The curse is being re-written into blessing.

Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love share another common bond, though. When you really have them, you wouldn't trade them for all that you have lost. Calamity, turmoil, trial, enemies. They are worth enduring if in the end you have Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. We'd love to have each of them without their corollary, of course, and someday we will (with the exception of hope! Someday, our hope will be fulfilled and will be no more.) Until the day we have perfect Peace, Joy, and Love, however, more often than not the way they will become evident in our lives is when they are held up against their alternative. The Christian's Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, are all more powerful than the forces that work against them, because they are rooted in the goodness of God himself.

That's the promise of the good news.

The Way that Leads to Life

“There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.”

— Proverbs 14:12; 16:25

The wisdom saying above occurs twice in the book of Proverbs, and why shouldn’t it? It is a summary of the way in which each of us walks his own way.

One can almost hear the thoughts of Adam in the Garden of Eden as he listened to his wife discuss the potential benefits of the “forbidden fruit” with the Serpent. In the end, after hearing the arguments, it is as if he thought to himself, “It seems like this is right. This is the best path forward to where I want to be.” He knew that God had said it would lead to death, but this way seemed more “right”.

Most of the time it is not the things that we know are wrong that get us off track; it is the things that we believe will be right for us. Perhaps it is only our motivation that is wrong, like performing good deeds for self-recognition. Maybe we assume that the ends justify the means, like lying on our resume because we believe that having this new job will allow us more flexibility to give of our time and our resources. Or, maybe we justify our actions by creating a greater evil that we are combating, like cheating on our taxes because we think the government will do worse with the money than we will.

Jesus did not walk according to his own way, but walked according to the way that God his Father had laid out for him. Because he perfectly walked God’s way, he was the perfect sacrifice for all of us who had walked according to our way. Because of his perfect life, his perfect sacrifice, and defeat of death, the way we must now walk is in the way—that is, we must walk in Jesus. (John 14:6)

The Gospel Vaccine

The best way to make sure that someone never understands the Gospel is to make them good.

I think this is what Jesus means when he tells the Pharisees that they go across sea and land to make a single convert and then make him "twice the son of hell" as they themselves are. There was a certain zeal to their activity; perhaps they were driven by a passion for their message. They may have appeared enthusiastic. Yet, they functionally shut the door to the kingdom of heaven in people's face. Why?

Because they taught people how to be saved without Jesus. They made people good. They told them how they could behave better, have a better life, be more religious, and please God on their own. Once they believed that they could please God with their own efforts, they were in double trouble. It's one thing to be ignorant of the fact that you have a problem (in this case, God's displeasure towards your best efforts); it's another thing entirely to believe that you've solved the problem on your own.

It's bad to have cancer and not know it. It's worse to have cancer but convince yourself everything is okay. In the case of the former, you might be open to the real remedy once the problem is revealed. In the case of the latter, you don't even think you need a remedy.

The way we do this in the world of American Christianity is giving people just enough Jesus that they don't ever bother to look for the real thing. We give them a vaccine. They are inoculated. And we do it by making them good.

Growing up, we were made good through religious activity. We had solid theology and doctrine, we just didn't have much of Jesus. We assumed Jesus. We could quote answer #1 from the catechism (at least the first part), we just didn't know how to actually get the comfort that we said we had (the second part of the answer). (Side note: question #2, which no one memorizes, also directs us towards the answer...)

Nowadays the pendulum has swung in the other direction. We no longer address doctrine, theology, or that sort of deep, boring, and confusing stuff. We just "follow Jesus". We're not entirely sure which Jesus, or what Jesus believed, or what he taught, or any of that confusing stuff. We do know how to be better parents, better lovers, and better employees, though, so it can't be all bad. Anything other than that we can just sort of make up as we go.

The end result is the same in both categories. It's either something we do or something we know that makes us okay with God. Either we know a lot about him, or we follow him. Unfortunately, neither is ultimately sufficient.

The heart of Christianity is putting our total confidence in Christ's work rather than our own; it's understanding God's absolute and one-way love towards sinners like us. It means admitting that my best isn't good enough. I can't earn God's acceptance–but I don't have to, because Jesus already has. God gives it to me, free of charge. That's grace. And it's the only way in to the kingdom of heaven.

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”

— Matthew 23:13-15

“Q. What is your only comfort
in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own,
but belong—
body and soul,
in life and in death—
to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven;
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.”

— Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1

“Q. What must you know to
live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. Three things:
first, how great my sin and misery are;
second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery;
third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.”

— Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 2