HE DOESN'T GET IT!

I need to break away from my pattern of recording thoughts from my personal devotions.  I rarely do this because I don’t think I have anything new or deep or especially meaningful to say on my own.  I don’t think I’m smart enough to debate with the great theological and philosophical minds out there so I don’t get verbally involved.  But I’ve been pushed over the edge this afternoon and I have to scream out.  Bear with me.

I was reading The New Yorker.  The New Yorker has the best cartoons of any magazine I’ve ever read but the articles often drive me to exasperation.  There are a couple of articles in this issue that have me hopping mad but I’m going to respond to just one.  It is a review of the book, The Joy of Secularism:  11 Essays for How We Live Now.  It is a re-cooking of the old “God is dead” view of the world.  Nothing really new.  But I’m tired of pseudo-intellectuals setting up Christianity as a straw man just so they can knock it down with their pseudo-brilliant arguments.  It becomes more and more obvious that they do not understand Christianity at its most basic and fundamental (not “fundamentalist”) level.

I quote: “Another difficulty is that, whether or not people did feel full or enchanted in centuries past, religion cannot be identified with the promise of fullness or enchantment.  Both Christianity and Islam harshly challenge the self with an insistence on submission, sacrifice, and kenosis—an emptying out of the self, an exchange of the wrong kind of fullness for the right kind of humility—and Buddhism seeks to undermine the very idea of the sovereign, unified self.  Revolutionary asceticism, which is what these religions in different ways embody, could be said to be hellbent on disenchantment.”

The writer misses the very meaning of Christianity.  Yes, the Bible does insist that Christian deal harshly with the self but it is not for the purpose of the emptying out of the self.  Jesus said, “If anyone wants to follow me he must deny himself, take up his cross, and then follow me.”  He does not say we have to empty out the self.  We are made in the image of God.  God made my “self.”  It is sacred.  At the same time, it is sinful.  That is why we must say “no” to the desires of self.  Secularism does not understand the most basic things like sin.  Humans created sinless in the image of God rebelled against God and suffered spiritual death.  We all are born in sin; born spiritually dead.  We are alive according to the flesh but dead according to the spirit.

Paul speaks about the “spirit” and the “flesh.”  There is conflict here.  The Christian has been filled by the Holy Spirit (how can the writer say Christianity cannot offer a promise of fullness?) while he continues to live in a body (the “flesh”) that is fallen, corrupted by sin.  We Christians are not told to empty ourselves of “self” but to deny the self, to say “no” to the flesh so the Holy Spirit might do his work of remaking us into the image of Jesus Christ.  Our “self” is being molded and shaped by God’s Spirit.  When we become followers of Jesus we do not stop being the people God made us.  In fact, we are only beginning to be made into the people God created us to be!

“Revolutionary asceticism?”  True Christianity is not ascetic.  True Christianity is lived out in the grimy, sinful, corrupt streets and alleys of our world.  True Christianity confronts the fallenness of this world and works to redeem it for Christ’s kingdom.  We are in the world while not participating in the corruption of the world.  If Christianity is not getting its hands dirty among the poor and needy and broken of its community then it is not doing the work of the kingdom!

The writer says Christianity is “hellbent on disenchantment.”  I suggest that the life offered to us by secularism is the most unfulfilling and disenchanting life there is.  Is this all there is?  Is this all we have and all there is to life?  Who’s being disenchanting now?  Jesus came to this world to give us abundant life, life so exciting, fulfilling, significant, and meaningful that it makes the secular “life” look a lot like death!  I want to make this testimony: My life is full!  God has given me a reason to get up in the morning.  He has given me people to serve and love.  The life he has put into me is every bit enchanting and joyous!

But I don’t write for The New Yorker.  I would just say that the writer needs to be a little more careful when he starts writing about things he doesn’t understand.  It just sounds foolish.

MAKING PEOPLE WONDER

Acts 3:6-10

Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you.  In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”  Taking him by the right hand he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong.  He jumped to his feet and began to walk.  Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God.  When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the same man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him.

There are just so many amazing things in this passage.  Peter and John were on their way to the temple courts just as they did every day when they encountered this beggar.  The poor man had been crippled since birth.  He had never had anything resembling a normal life and had spent almost every day at the temple gate begging for his living.  When he petitioned Peter and John he had no idea how his life was about to be changed. 

Three or four sermons leap off the page at me.  The man was asking for money from the apostles but neither of them had any money to give him.  Even though they could not meet his request they still gave him what they had.  They gave him Jesus.  But that’s not what caught my attention.

What a miracle God performed through Peter and John!  Here was a man who had never walked.  He didn’t know how to walk!  When he was healed in the name of Jesus, not only could he walk but he jumped to his feet and began jumping around!  When God takes our poor, broken lives into his hands and gives us new life he makes us spiritually whole!  But that’s not what caught my attention either.

The healed beggar followed Peter and John into the temple and made quite a scene with his jumping around and praising God.  I don’t think he was just quietly bowing his head and thanking God under his breath for what God had done for him.  The picture I have is one of boisterous shouting and laughing.  Probably many people thought it was rather inappropriate.  But when a person has been healed from a life of suffering it is most appropriate for him to loudly praise God and make a scene!  But that’s not what caught my attention either.

Here’s what really stopped me in my tracks as I was reading.  The people recognized him as the same man who sat begging every day at the gate of the temple.  They saw how dramatically his life was changed.  They were able to observe what God had done in his life because the change was obvious.  And as a result they were filled with wonder and amazement! 

I want to live my life in front of my neighbors and my community in such a way that they will be filled with wonder and amazement at what God has done for me!  I don’t want to live my life in privacy.  I want to live publicly.  I want people to see what happens when God takes a man and changes him.  I want them to be astonished and I want them to wonder what makes me the way I am.  I want to draw attention to God and his power and his miracles.  None of this would have happened if the beggar had just gone home to show his friends and family he had been healed.  People won’t wonder at my life if the only people who ever get to know me are my family and my church!