I may be out of town, for the next few days, visiting a few friends before I leave the country, so I wanted to post part 2 of 3 for chapter 1. This is mostly due to the subject of this section being so pertinent to the people I’m about to be staying with, and I only pray that I keep it in mind while I’m there.
Lately, when I’ve been traveling, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. I think that I prefer for my mind to be engaged for a few hours, rather than just listen to songs I’ve heard 100+ times before. I usually listen to Ravi Zacharias (I love his accent and mixed commentary on our postmodern world), but I finally caught up on his series. So I started to listen to an Andy Stanley series I had randomly downloaded, and I’m glad I did because it so perfectly matched this part of David Platt’s chapter. This podcast series was on “The Shocking Statements of Jesus” and describes almost everything Platt says on how to “talk people out of following Jesus”. What I’ve learned is that, if you want people to follow a religion, never tell them the things Jesus said (John 6, Luke 9). Jesus told people to “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood” in order to have eternal life. If we heard some guy preaching that in our modern times, we would have all assumed that he was just crazy and thought of himself as a vampire. Imagine what people in the Biblical times thought. Even Jesus’ disciples thought he was losing his mind. Then, as if that’s not enough, when three very eager men are looking to follow Jesus, He tells them that, to truly be His disciples, they may be homeless, they must not worry about burying their own family members, or even say goodbye to their family members, and they must even be willing to pick up a cross (a device meant for humiliation and torture) and follow Him into possible death. I don’t think this is something that modern Christians want to think about. You can try to rationalize it any way you want by saying things like, “Well God just wants me to be willing…” How many times have I heard a wealthy man say that and still only give 10%? How many times have I heard someone say that but, when they’re called to act, they shrivel up in fear? When it comes down to it, we’re just trying to soften Jesus and make Him sound less radical. God forbid our lives our shaken up. I love this quote from Platt, on pg. 13 of Radical, about what we want Jesus to really be:
“A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who would not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are…But do you and I realize what we are doing at this point? We are molding Jesus into our own image… We [are] settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually abandoning ourselves.”
At the end of this paragraph, it took all my efforts to not yell out an, “AMEN!” But my mother’s Bible study was going on, and I didn’t want to interrupt them. This is something that I feel so passionately about and something I so desperately want people in America to understand, that it was actually this very part that made me want to start writing a blog. All I could think was, “Why don’t more people think this way? Maybe the more people that put it out there and the more people that shout it out, the more people there will be empowered by it and living it out.”
It may seem crazy that I follow a man that asks so much of me, but, as Peter once said, “To whom shall I go?” My eyes have been opened to God and to His blessings. I know too much about the evil of Satan and the workings of God to turn my back on Him now. I may have more questions now than I ever had before going to Bible college, and I may have more fear and doubt than ever before, but if I were to stop following Jesus then I would have to follow something else (sorry guys, even atheism is a religion). The cost of following something or someone besides God is a much higher cost then any question I could ever have.
All this made me realize that not everyone can follow Jesus (I’m not speaking about free will and predestination). I don’t think everyone has the capacity or strength to (or call it stupidity, if you must). More so, I think Jesus knew that because, if you read the New Testament, you’ll realize that Jesus didn’t tell everyone that came His way to just “Pray a prayer, accept me as your savior, and everything will be forgiven.” Technically, yes, that’s the way it words. But as there is no works without faith, there is no faith without works. And following Jesus is work, in its own way (I don’t mean the Old Testament law and physical sacrifice way, either). Jesus just means that if we are going to say we are going to believe in Him, then we need to go big or go home. He asks for true devotion. And this is what I need to remember when I’m talking to my friends who don’t know God. I realize that so often I make it about the prize at the end of the tunnel – just believe in God and you get to go to heaven! No more fear of death! No more suffering by yourself! I say all this without ever mentioning the journey to get there. I think believers need to focus less on getting converts and more on just talking about Jesus. Chances are many will walk away (and then at least you’ve maybe planted a seed), but some will hear about Him and know they have nowhere else to go. And those are the kinds of people God really wants, anyways.
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results.
Maybe it's time I preached the Bible the way Jesus did - untactfully; not trying to convert people; not caring what others think.
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and getting the same results.
Maybe it's time I preached the Bible the way Jesus did - untactfully; not trying to convert people; not caring what others think.
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