Asleep in the Light

A Nation of Fig Trees

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And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.
—Matthew 21:19

A conversation with my sister-in-law troubled me. It had to do with the old aphorism “Bloom where you’re planted.”

A couple weeks ago, I posted the following:

Overheard countless times in the last two months: “I am concerned about the poor performance of my investments and savings.

Not heard even one time in the last two decades:  “I am concerned about my poor performance in laying up treasure in heaven.

It all ties together, trust me.

I recently turned 46. To me, that’s an “other side of the mountain” age. I look at people just 10 years older and they’ve gone gray and have that “retired” look. Entropy overshoots no one.

When I take stock of my life, I’m deeply troubled. I’m simply not laying up treasure in heaven. Period. End of story.

I wish I could say that the problem is found only inside me. But it’s not. In many ways, I know that I surpass a lot of other Christians in treasure-laying-up. At least here in the States.

So my sister-in-law and I were talking about this issue and she unleashed the “Bloom where you’re planted” line. She said that God can’t fault us if we’re good employees providing for our families, Jesus cursing the fig treeraising up our kids in the knowledge of the Lord, and just being a good Christian when a good Christian is called for. Given the pressures most people face in life today, just doing those things has to count for something.

But does it?

The way I look at it, if you pull the average family man off the street and analyze his life, he’s probably doing most of those things. He may even be packing his family off to church once a week.

But I can’t see how any of that fulfills the upward call of Christ. For all I know, that man doesn’t know Jesus at all. What then distinguishes the average American Christian from his non-Christian neighbor? If “bloom where you’re planted” is the be all and end all of modern living, then isn’t Joe Pagan blooming, too?

A quick read of the ending of Matthew gives us a clue into Jesus’ standard of living:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
—Matthew 28:18-20

How does that jive with the list of prerequisite works found within the “bloom where you’re planted” ideal?

It doesn’t.

In the last 10 years, I’ve had one person try to witness to me. Her witness consisted of handing me and the rest of my group a tract. She did this for about 20 people, ran out of tracts, and then skedaddled, not saying a word.

I fear that encounter pretty much encapsulates what passes for making disciples today: quick, harmless, and no cost to the “discipler.”

But then again, how can we expect anything else? Everyone is too busy blooming where they are planted to give a hoot about evangelism or spending time making disciples.

The sad part, to me at least, is that I’m no better than anyone else. I’m too busy attempting to feed my family to have even two seconds for ministry.

Back when I had a little bit more time, I encouraged my church to consider a mentoring program for kids in the church who lacked dads. Today, they put out the sign-up sheet. I stood there with a tear in my eye, unable to sign my name on the sheet endorsing the very idea I suggested.

Something has got to give.

How can any of us expect to hear “Well done good and faithful servant” if the only people we serve are our families? Don’t the godless do the very same thing?

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
—Mark 10:29-31

The way we Christians in America live, I expect to see the vast majority of us standing at the end of the celestial line, our heavenly garb tinged with a hint of soot and sulfur after the test of fire incinerated everything we worked for in our earthly lives. Maybe a minuscule fleck of gold remained. Maybe. Emphasis on minuscule.

And what is that speck? Our treasure in heaven.

To bloom where we are planted requires we actually bloom. But not simply for ourselves. The fig tree that Jesus cursed probably did bloom. It just didn’t produce any fruit. Yet what point is a fruit tree with no fruit?

What point is a Christian who has no time for obeying the command of Christ to go make disciples no matter the cost to us? What good is a Christian whose life revolves around the same daily routine as the non-Christian, save for squeezing in church on Sunday and some prayers and Bible reading during the week? Isn’t the barrenness just as obvious between the avowed follower and the lost?

Many of us believe the end is close at hand. If so, what explains the lack of work for the Kingdom? We’re all so worried the economy will take our jobs away, but what if being forced to watch all our earthly treasure signed over to some bank is the best thing for each of us? Maybe actually losing everything would reinforce the words we speak glibly about forsaking all for Jesus.

It’s a hard word, isn’t it?

Living Lighter, Living Larger

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Nope. No room for God here...I spent most of this week discarding.

Most of what got tossed went to the recycling center. Other items will be sold off. I don’t like to see my excess wind up in a landfill just because I couldn’t control how much I consume. Driving past the county dump this afternoon, it seemed to me to be a hundred feet higher. Though I do my best not to contribute to the altitude, I can’t escape that at least a few of those towering inches are indeed mine.

The number of bags of shredded files totaled five. I can probably shred another ten bagfuls. My parents’ lives comprised much of those confetti strips of paper. They’ve been gone nearly seven years now. Old mortgage papers, phone numbers for people who have moved on, medical receipts. Two lives in paper.

Our house resembles a bomb blast as we make room. Items that once held precious memories today prove that magic drains out in time. The present asserts itself, while the future bears down with the weight of uncertainty.

The Lord’s been speaking to my heart this week. He says I need to live lighter. With each discarded item, each memory that tumbles from my hand, each dream I let go, I know I’m one step closer to heaven.

I don’t think that word’s just for me, though.

I’ve lost nearly 30 pounds on the low-glycemic diet I’ve been following. It could have been more, but 30 was enough. I added a few off-limits items and my weight has stabilized. Of all the effects of this weight loss, none compares with the energy I’ve rediscovered.

There’s a lesson for us in that.

Whenever I consider the American Church’s state, I can’t help but think that much of our problem stems, not from the weight of glory, but from the burden of worldliness. Our inability to resist the weight of the world has rendered us fat and lazy, shackled to things, and far from the heart of God.

A simple gut check here: we don’t do the things Christ asks of us because if we did, we’d have to lose our lives. We’d have to step away from the TV, turn off the iPod, stop planning the vacation in Cancun, and get serious about the work of the Lord. We’d have to stop wondering how to insure all the debris we lay claim to and start investing in the Kingdom.

But you see, we can’t, can we? All that stuff means too much to us.

I hear so many people talking about seeking after God for a vision for their lives. To most of those people, I would say, “Give up now.”

Why? Because not a square inch exists in their souls for whatever vision God would wish to give them. All the empty places reserved for the Lord are filled with the world’s accumulated trappings. That stops 99 percent of Christians in the West dead, right there. They’ll never be effective for the Kingdom because they can’t give it all up and live lighter.

When God sent manna, He warned the people not to store it because He wants His people to live lighter.

When the days grow dim, Jesus warns us not to go back for our coat when it is time to move because He wants us to live lighter.

The desire to hold onto the world’s symbols of success destroys Christians. Destroys. The number of people who put their hands to the plow and look back must be in the millions. And each one of those millions grieves the heart of God. When I think of all those hopeful servants who never achieved God’s best for them because, like the monkey who grabbed the coconut in the trap, they couldn’t let go of their stuff and subsequently saw their ministry potential nullified…well, it breaks my heart.

At one point in my life, nearly everything I owned fit into my Honda Civic hatchback. But time, a little success, marriage, and children all contribute to this upward parabolic curve of accumulation that inevitably leads to divided loyalties. And most people fail to question that division. They’ll call their wealth “God’s blessing,” yet for most people that “blessing” only leads to a soul loaded down with perishables. Instead of storing up treasure for heaven, we’re hoarding the wealth of the flesh and watching our potential for the Kingdom wither and die.

The American Dream undoes most of us. On paper, it reads great. But the reality only leads to bloat and uselessness. And if we think God’s going to use us mightily for the Kingdom when we’re stuffed to the gills with the world’s excess, then we’re the most deceived people on the face of the planet.

If we want our lives to reflect the transformation from self-centered louts into the glorious image of Christ, then we have a choice don’t we? And the amazing thing about that choice is that even if we chose wrong a long time ago, the Lord will give us another chance to choose right. He wants us to lose the world’s flab, even if we gorged ourselves on it once.

Right now, it’s not too late. One day, it will be.

To live larger, we’ve got to live lighter.

What do you have to lose?

Calvin Declines

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Excerpted from The Houston Chronicle – 7/21/04:

“As early as this year and certainly, if the projections hold, within the next two years, the majority of American adults will not be Protestants for the first time since the founding of colonial Jamestown,” said Tom W. Smith, director of the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey.

“We were always at least a majority Protestant country, and that is about to change.”

The survey, which was released Tuesday, has studied various aspects of American life, including its religious dimension, for 32 years.

From 1972 to 1993, it found that Protestants constituted 63 percent of the national population. But the total declined to 52 percent in 2002.

The study mirrors results from a recent Harris County survey. Protestants decreased from 56 percent in 1994 to 34 percent in 2004, according to the Houston Area Survey directed by Stephen Klineberg, a Rice University sociology professor.

One reason for the national decline, Smith said, is a failure to keep youths and young adults within the Protestant fold.

From the ’70s through the early ’90s, Protestant churches retained 90 percent of young people, but that dropped to 83 percent after 1993, he said.

Another reason: Once-nominal Protestants are more open to stating that they are no longer affiliated with any denomination, he said. In the survey, the number of people saying they had no religion grew from 9 percent in 1993 to 14 percent in 2002.

And, some people who once identified themselves as Protestant now call themselves “Christian,” which would put them in the survey’s growing “other” category. Latter-day Saints, Muslims and Eastern religions are also in the “other” category, which grew from 3 percent in 1993 to 7 percent in 2002.

I guess you can say that the Reformation is essentially dead.

Folks are unpacking these numbers various ways. Non-Protestant immigrants are thinning the ranks as the United States struggles to maintain its borders. More Christians are failing to self-identify as “Protestant,” choosing a more generic title of “Christian” (a category that grew slightly.)

But with the rise of Islam in America, as well as the unabated hemorrhage of people who are weighing the Church in the scale and finding it wanting (the “no religion” crowd), there are serious problems the Church in America must face.

The first is obvious: We simply are not leading people to Christ. I believe that if every self-confessed “Protestant” led one person to Christ every five years, we would see those numbers dramatically shift. Just about a dozen people pointed to Jesus in a person’s lifetime. I have to wonder how hard that is to do. The numbers do not lie, though—every measure of Christian life out there shows declining or stagnant numbers. We simply are not leading people to Christ.

Nor are we reproducing. God’s people have been encourage by the Lord Himself to be fruitful, yet our birthrates in the Christian community are hovering in the low single digits, at best. We are barely replacing ourselves. Meanwhile, Muslim families are experiencing birthrates more than twice what ours are. Most futurists are speculating that Islam will overtake Christianity as the primary world religion sometime between 2025 and 2035. And much of that is simply through birth rates.

We have been asleep on our watch. We need to be telling people about Christ and raising Christian children. It is God’s desire that everyone be saved and that none perish. But we have to do something about it.

I understand the family issue is huge one and that not everyone can have a half dozen kids. But there is no reason why we cannot adopt or foster children, raising them in the fear of the Lord.

No reason at all exists, though, to justify why we are not out there bringing people to Christ.

Turn the TV off. Throw out the XBox. Unplug the iPod. Then let’s all get out there and work to bring in the harvest. The laborers already are few; let’s not let them become nonexistent.