Simplicity

One Moment in Time—and Beyond

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I believe it was an International Bible Society study that showed that nearly all people who become Christians do so by age nineteen. That figure stunned me at the time. We've got to get people young, folks. That's why bringing young people to Christ is so astonishingly important.

But another figure hidden in that survey speaks just as loudly. If the average American today lives to at least eighty, the IBS survey also tells us that the person who comes to Christ at age nineteen will spend sixty years or more in discipleship.

Think about that figure—sixty years of following Christ after conversion.Real life sliced and diced

The image at right puts this in perspective. The slice of pie that comprises a person's pagan life before Christ consumes about a quarter of life. Following after Christ takes up three-quarters. The moment of conversion, though crucial, is but a mere slice.

Yet you would think that conversion, that one moment in time, is all there is to the Christian life. Given how we Evangelicals devote so much time, energy, and angst to conversion, you'd think that the sixty years afterward are a drop in the bucket. In the Godblogosphere, the handwringing over conversion (and the theology behind it) weights it even more. Discipleship may seem an afterthought.

I'm saddened when I get e-mails from folks saying all their church ever talks about is getting people saved. Don't get me wrong; it's excellent that churches preach the salvation message. But most of the people in the church are already saved, so what help do they get in actually living out their conversion if they hear the same salvation message over and over again?

The Bible says this:

And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
—John 17:3 ESV

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV

I didn't know my wife the first time I met her. In many ways, I still didn't know her even on our honeymoon. Learning who she is will take me the rest of my life because the depth of her personhood will only be revealed in time.

The same goes for Jesus Christ. Most of us have barely scratched the surface of what it means to know Him. Yet the Bible says that knowing Him IS eternal life! It's not escaping hell, it's knowing the person of Jesus Christ. Deep calls to deep. If Jesus Christ and a hundred Jesus impersonators were put into a lineup, would we be able to pick the real Jesus out of the crowd of imposters? Think hard about that question.

Likewise, our conversion to Christ does not end our growth as Christians. Too often, though, our churches act like they have no more to tell us once we say yes to the Lord. "Just don't do bad things now" is the extent of the post-conversion advice.

But the Bible says that we're supposed to be changing from one degree of glory into another, a process that will take our entire lives. That is if we surrender to that process of Christ making Himself in us. For it's His glory that shapes us over those sixty years.

Too often, our discipleship is self-centered. Life becomes nothing more than the avoidance of pain and the accumulation of comfort. But we can't walk the narrow path staring into our navels; we'll wind up in a ditch.

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
—Ephesians 2:10 ESV

And as you go, proclaim, saying, "The kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. You have received freely, freely give.
—Matthew 10:7-8 MKJV

For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall reward each one according to his works.
—Matthew 16:27 MKJV 

If you're a Christian, you're a new creation. And what were you created for? Good works in Christ. The real disciple of Jesus Christ spends his or her sixty years after conversion walking out a discipleship that is other-centric. It's centered on the Lord and on the ones who are dying around us. Yes, we can read great treatises on theology, accumulate vast libraries of Christian thought, attend Christian conferences one after the other, but if we're not freely giving away what we freely received, then we'll spend sixty years wasting God's mercy. Instead, we must be focused on others to ensure that the reward we have in heaven is great.

We all know "Away in the Manger." There's not a three-year-old out there that doesn't learn this Christmas carol first. As a result, few think of it in terms of theological depth. The final stanza says it all:

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray;
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,
And fit us for Heaven to live with Thee there.

Our sixty years of discipleship is meant for one thing: to fit us for Heaven to live with Christ eternally. What you and I are doing right now in this moment of time is shaping our eternity. Don't be deceived. Following Christ was never intended as fire insurance. Instead, it's meant to remake citizens of Earth into citizens of Heaven.

Are we giving away our life here so we can take on new life? Can we with all certainty pick Jesus out of the lineup? He may not look like an itinerant rabbi, but the homeless man drunk outside our office building. How then will we know Him unless we do the good works that encounter Him? Are we spending all our time looking at our conversion when we should be focused on our inheritance?

Sixty years is at once quite long, yet so very short in the eyes of eternity. In truth, our lives are not so much like a pie chart, but a never-ending timeline that began a breath ago. In a flash comes conversion, but then we live out the eternal consequences of our discipleship.

It's about learning to be a disciple, giving away freely what we were freely given: love, mercy, and grace. Let's not waste our sixty years.

Our Obsession with Labels

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"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."

–Mark 9:38 NIV 

The phosphors weren't even dark on my monitor before someone challenged me to come out of my hiatus. In short turn, two more incidents cried out, begging me to post, taunting me to spurn my self-imposed break. Curiously, all three possessed a common thread: an obsession with labels.

Nathan Busenitz posted excerpts from an old interview in which the normally sane John MacArthur threw a rod and proudly declared that all Christians are dispensationalists. Just like he is. If they were truly honest with themselves, that is.

Hmm. I wonder how R.C. Sproul and Vern Poythress took that news.

Last time I checked, there wasn't a Darbyite bone in my body, but that's beside the point. MacArthur felt the need to assign a label to all of Protestantism that he uses to refer to himself. But like Lay's Potato Chips, you can't stop at one. "Dispensationalist" doesn't cover it all. Go ahead, put a label on it!In Johnny Mac's case, he's a Reformed Calvinist Cessationist Credobaptist Dispensationalist. I'm sure if we delved deeper we could determine if he's an Infra- or Supralapsarian. He probably supports the use of grape juice over wine, so add Teetotaling to the list of labels.

Boy, that's a lot of labels. 

The second confrontation with labels came inside Cerulean Sanctum, when my repost on homeschooling got a number of commenters hot and bothered. At issue was my innocent comment about homeschooling my son. "No," came the righteous response from a couple people, "you are most definitely NOT homeschooling your son. You're doing a public e-school at home, but that's not the same as homeschooling." 

Seems I can't even label myself correctly. Other people have to step in and do it for me.

Even if I should concede that the critics are correct on the jots and tittles of this particular letter of the law, still the issue of labels raised its ugly head. We have to know who's right and who's wrong. Judging by the vociferous (and verging on venomous) response my self-labeling received, "hellaciously wrong" was the correct answer.

And lastly, within hours of my final pre-hiatus post, a respected Godblogger took me to task for my hesitancy to toss labels around. He objected to the "About My Theology" portion of my "About Cerulean Sanctum" page, wherein I state the following:

I'm "Reformational," meaning I completely affirm what came out of the Reformation. Labels are difficult and I tend to eschew them, so I'm not "Totally Reformed" in the strict five-point Calvinist manner that many Godbloggers are, but I lean more toward the theology of Martin Luther.

My insistence that I don't like labels didn't sit well. The gist of this blogger's post channeled Lucy Van Pelt and labeled me the Charlie Brown of the Godblogosphere. You know, wishy washy. (Though I somehow got a few points for being honest about it!) 

What is it with the American Church's obsession with labels?

I find it nearly impossible to find much emphasis on labels in the New Testament, particularly the Gospels. Let's take a look at the disciples' attempts to label:

"Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."

–Mark 9:38 NIV

Not one of us. That's a classic in the labeling community, isn't it? We use the "not one of us" label more than any other. We insist on dividing, creating schisms, and call our obsession "discernment."

But how did Jesus address John's labeling of this man?

"Do not stop him," Jesus said. "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us."

—Mark 9:39-40

Jesus' response: Tactful rebuke coupled with a complete overhaul of terms. Better still, he narrowed the label further (which we'll discuss further down.)

I'm sure the disciples' labeling the man taxed Jesus' patience—at least a bit—since mere verses before the disciples engaged in another common labeling practice:

They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.

—Mark 9:33-34

Here we have the flip side of "not one of us," the "we're the best" label. Of course, with such a label, someone must fall into the category of "not the best," or as we more commonly see it enunciated, "scum of the earth."

Any guesses as to Jesus' response? Yes, tactful rebuke coupled with a complete overhaul of terms. Detect a pattern here?

In fact, the more one looks at the labeling practices of the people Jesus encounters in the New Testement, the more we see that people do a lousy job of godly labeling. The Roman centurion labeled himself "unworthy," but Jesus labeled him "faithful." The Pharisees were dying to label the man born blind or his parents "sinners." Jesus said no, "glory of God." Most people would label the priest and the Levite "godly," but Jesus reserves that label for the hated Samaritan who stops to help the man robbers left for dead.

Jesus repeatedly turned labeling on its head. While we have a penchant for a plethora of labels we use to determine who's greatest and who's one of us, plus all the subdivisions within those, Jesus stuck with only two:

  • For Us vs. Against Us
  • Sheep vs. Goats
  • Wheat vs. Tares
  • Found vs. Lost 
  • Saved vs. Unsaved
  • Faithful vs. Unfaithful 
  • Believers vs. Unbelievers 

If Jesus stuck to such simplified labeling, what about the Church He founded? 

If we examine the early Church, we WON'T find the apostles straining for a name for the burgeoning movement of Christ followers in Jerusalem. No one's angling for a label at Pentecost. It's not till Chapter 9 of Acts that we hear the label "the Way" applied. And it's in Antioch in Acts 11:26 that the movement gets a label that sticks, Christians. That label came in 45 BC, twelve years after the founding of the Church!

You see, the early Church had a job to do. They didn't have time to waste labeling themselves or others. As far as they were concerned, the labels Jesus used met their needs. Stick to the basics.

So why is it that Christians today feel compelled to resort to so many labels—and so obsessively?

I believe part of the problem lies in our modernistic tendency to condense everything we encounter into easily knowable parameters. We take comfort in thinking we comprehend what an item is by its labels. Unfortunately, we can attach all the labels in the world to someone or something and still miss the whole picture. For instance, we can label each part of a peacock—forehead, lore, beak, wings, primaries, secondaries, tertiaries, scapulars, coverlets, feet, etc.—but utterly miss the beauty and majesty of it.

If a family member died, would we be mortified if a Reformed Calvinist Cessationist Credobaptist Dispensationalist Supralapsarian Teetotaler knocked on our door and offered to grieve with us even though we were Arminian Pentecostal Holiness Lordship-Salvation Pedobaptists who drank a glass of wine for our stomach every day just like Paul advised Timothy? I doubt it.

Why all the fuss then?

I'm sick of labels, personally. I'm a Christian; that's the only label I wish to be known by. As to other labels, Jesus offers nothing but rebuke. The older I get, the more I understand that truth.

Time to stop the obsessive labeling. We're only hurting the cause of Jesus Christ by loving our labels more than each other.

My Hope for What the Church Will Be, Part 2

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Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
—1 Thessalonians 5:11 ESV

In part 1 of this two-parter, I outlined how a secular meeting carried in it all the hallmarks of real community, the kind that should power the Church. However, I don't believe that we understand how vital community is to the believer, therefore we tend to wander like lone rangers thinking "Christ is all I need," but forgetting that it is in the Body of Christ that He chooses to express Himself before He returns.

What would the Church in America look like if we took 1 Thessalonians 5:11 to heart and made it bedrock to our interactions within the Christian community?

I guarantee that not a single person reading this wakes up in the morning thinking, "How can I build up other believers?" I'm not sure even our pastors think that way. I don't think that way.

But what if we did?

We talk about service, but service is nothing more than putting aside my need to meet the need of someone else. The Bible that we read and study so that we can be equipped for every good work stays mere words unless we let the Holy Spirit change our minds about those good works within community. Christ gazing down at the throngsIf I'm not reading the Scriptures with a heart inclined toward service, then the word remains unfruitful in me. I may say that I want to be like Jesus, who came to serve and give Himself as a ransom, but that aspiration means nothing unless I die to self and take on His mantle of service to others.

Last year was a bad one for the Christian blogosphere. I can't ever remember so many horrible arguments paraded in public like I did some of the blog posts from 2005. Yet how slim were the words of encouragement! We had our proportions reversed and it showed in vitriolic commentary as foes arose where none were before.

This lack of up-building comes from daily repeating the world's mantra that I am all that is. Me. Myself. I. As much as we Americans like to think of ourselves as generous people (and we are to some extent), we still wear our self-centeredness on our sleeves. We've even made the Jesus who died for the sins of the world into a personal savior. Not his. Not hers. But mine.

I now understand that some Christians are requesting that their personal information be left out of church directories in order to protect their private lives! Listen, when we became Christians, we gave up all rights to a private life. People of the world dead in their sins have a private life, but the Christian doesn't. The Christian has a public, communal life. That community is key to everything the believer does and is! You can't build a temple to the Lord out of one stone, but with a quarry of them you can.

When each of us fixates so much on his or her own thing, is it any wonder that so many people have been burned by the Church? Worse yet, some people make spiritual excuses for that hurt. Earlier this year, I read a comment on another blog that excused hurting fellow believers by claiming that it's God's will for the hurt to happen. I thought, Then by all means, let's treat each other more savagely so that grace may abound! Let's be even MORE self-centered.

Benjamin Franklin, when confronted with the enormity of the independence he and his colleagues proposed, proclaimed, "We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately." How sad that so many of us in the Church in this country have chosen to hang separately. We let our brothers and sisters fend off the Enemy's attacks alone. Families fall to the ground and so few take it to heart, instead shaking heads and saying, "Thank God that wasn't us."

But time, and what comes with it, is fickle. One day, it might be us. What then? When we weren't there for others, how can we expect anyone to be there for us?

I get so many letters from people in dire straits who turned to their churches for help and got a door slammed in their faces. I could blog for the next year by doing nothing more than posting those e-mails from the very first day I started writing about these topics on this blog. Isn't that sad?

What will it take for us, when we're confronted with a need, for our first words to be, "How can I help?" Isn't that the character of Jesus Christ right there? Whenever He was confronted with a person's need, He didn't say, "Oh, I'll pray for you next time I draw away to a mountain top." No! He did something about that need right then and there. He met the needs of His community, the ones who lived in His region of Palestine so long ago. 

We need each other, folks. The Church that God blesses is the one that works like an athlete's finely-tuned body, not like a bunch of organs held together by sheer force of will and a set of gritted teeth. My hope for the Church would be the same one that Paul desires: that we encourage each other and build each other up. If I'm in pain, you're there for me. When you need money, I offer to help. Even if my contribution looks more like the widow's mite than the enormity of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, I still give it, even if that means I have to give up something I crave like crazy to make it possible.

Paul wrote this to the Corinthians:

So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.
—1 Corinthians 14:12 ESV

If we ever want to see the Spirit take our churches to the next level, building each other up, whether spiritually or by meeting the physical needs of the brethren, is the catalyst for empowerment. If we watch each other's backs and truly hang together, I know we'll be better for it in ways we can only dream of.

That's my hope for what the Church in America 2006 (and beyond) will be.