Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Too Much Cream in the Coffee

So I'm on the verge of no longer being a 'Christian' but being a follower of Jesus. I live in America so naturally I am a part of the Christian movement here in the United States, but I am really starting to feel like a foreigner in my land.

When I look at Jesus and I look at American Evangelical Christianity I barely see the same thing. Jesus taught that the pursuit of happiness was to rid our self of all exterior affirmation and solely find our identity in Him. He called us to sacrifice everything, our time, pursuit of happiness, our will...everything to follow Him.

To the Christian this is absolute death to self and it SUCKS.

To use a Mark Driscoll analogy; the Christian is the only one who has the right to complain about following Jesus. We all choose hell. We all want nothing to do with God. BUT, God intervenes in our life and saves us from our self. Literally, He took our free will of not wanting to follow Him and overwhelmed us with His grace to follow Him.

Somehow, A.E. Christianity has done away with surrender and allowed us to continue to have both. We can now be 'Christians' AND pursue our own desires.

The foundation of our country was a little about religious freedom and A LOT about pursuing happiness.

Sure we had to have a little genocide and get rid of those red people, sure we needed those dark people to build our empire....BUT we can practice our religion free from the Queen AND pursue our life, our liberty, and our happiness.

So now-a-days the church isn't as racist as it used to be but, boy, we sure like to pursue our 'self'. Sure, we're a generous people that donate money to causes but we'll leave it up to 'those people' called to serve the poor. Sure, we like new 'sexy' words like community and discipleship but we don't actually have to do it outside of Sunday's.

I've realized something about myself. I've always wanted to live more radically but have always been scared. I've tried to attach myself to communities that can pursue surrender together but I realize others are scared as well.

I just want to be able to pray with people, worship God, LEARN who Jesus is, and go freaking do the stuff! And I don't just want to do this once a week. The really hard thing about this is that I have to sacrifice myself and my impulse. My 'old creation' is always beneath the surface. My old creation just wants to surf, drink beer, and watch porn. I'm just being honest. My old self doesn't want to gather with people and pray, worship, learn about Jesus, and serve others. My my old self, surely, doesn't want to do that daily.

This is probably why Jesus calls the road "narrow and difficult" and "FEW will go down it."

Maybe this is why I'm so skeptical of Christian's, because FEW people actually will follow Christ. Jesus might me our 'homeboy' but are we willing to give up all of us to live in community with Him and others?

This is why I say I'm on the verge of no longer being a Christian but being a follower of Jesus: It's just too EASY to be a Christian in our society.