What's the Point of Following Jesus?

The following is from Dallas Willard's book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, and it is quoted in a blog post by Kurt Willems:

“Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth.  These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays.  Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behavior such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do.  For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser…True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.”

In his post, Willems speaks of a typical struggle that many followers of Jesus have, vacillating between an emphasis on personal holiness and doing acts of justice. I think many of us would identify with what he writes there so I recommend reading his complete post:  /http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2012/08/23/christian-life-worth-living/.

Reactionary Brake-Slamming

I was just remembering this morning a simple reality that the Lord made real to me many years ago when I was running my car through a commercial car wash. As the water was spraying and the big brushes were moving up and down the sides of the car, my reflex reaction was to hit the brakes even though I had the car in "park" mode and it wasn't going anywhere. The combination of diminished vision and machine parts moving outside of the vehicle gave me the sensation that the car was moving...

I learned that to keep from feeling like hitting the brakes, I should look for a reference point, something unmoving, in the wash bay and simply fix my eyes on that. That day I saw a spot on the wall where some paint had chipped off and I kept my eyes on that spot. Now I could relax and enjoy the car wash without a sense of disorientation and without the urge to slam on my car brakes!

Being part of the technology age, we are all caught up in the disorientation caused in part by the break-neck pace of life coupled with an increase of human brokenness and the proliferation of countless opposing opinions and negative emotions that fill the atmosphere through the internet. We as Jesus' followers will resort to fearful reactionary "brake-slamming" in our journey with God because of our desire to keep a sense of stability unless there is a reference point that we are fixed on continually. Jesus is that reference point, the one unmoving reality in our life when all else is moving and changing around us.

I believe He wants us to be able to relax in the midst of the ever moving elements of this age, but we won't be able to if we are constantly "slamming on the brakes" (grasping for control of life) in order to feel secure. He alone is that place of stability and unchanging reality that the human soul longs for. May we find Him to be this reference point (both as individuals and as a people of God)...

Eugene Peterson in The Message paraphrases Hebrews 12:2,3 like this: "Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed - that exhilarating finish in and with God - he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever...When you find yourself flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!"

Fruit of the Spirit: the Way of Washing Feet

I believe the quote below from Dietrich Bonhoeffer helps paint a picture of what it looks like for Jesus' followers to wash the feet of others in His name:

"In the midst of discipline, the entire fullness of the Holy Spirit wants to unfold and to ripen, and we should give it full space within us for the sake of God, for the sake of others, and for our own sake. The entire world of God, the dear Father, wants to be born in us, to grow and ripen. Love—where only suspicion and hostility reign; joy—instead of bitterness and pain; peace—amid internal and external strife; patience—where impatience threatens to overwhelm us; kindness—where only raw and hard words seem to make any difference; goodness—where understanding and empathy seem like weakness; faithfulness—where long separations and enormous changes in all relationships seek to rock the foundations of even what is most stable; gentleness—where recklessness and selfishness seem to be the only ways to reach one’s goals; self-control—where short term pleasures seem to be the only reasonable option and all bonds are about to dissolve."

Simply Jesus - Personal Response

I recently completed a review on N.T. Wright's book, Simply Jesus, and want to give a personal response to the book. Among many things about the book that helped and encouraged me, one strong message that it reinforced for me is that Jesus and His kingdom transcend all earthly kingdoms and empires. In other words, to use Wright's metaphor of the "perfect storm" in this book, the wind of God (Jesus) blows in from an entirely different angle than the winds of religion and politics.

And it reminded me again that we as modern western evangelicals may be aligned with the religious Jewish north wind of Jesus' day more than we would care to admit. We imagine that God is on our side, meaning that He will rescue us from the evil in our world by putting political leaders and policies in place that favor Christianity and that give Christians position and power. But as Wright so aptly points out, the Jews themselves (who had the right story and beliefs but completely misunderstood God's radically different way of dealing with oppressive powers through dealing with the Satan behind all the powers and by transforming the heart of humans) would rule in the very same way as their oppressors if God had done things their way.

Blessing the persecutor while suffering in Jesus' name (which the New Testament promises as part of what it means to follow Jesus in this age) is a key part of how God purges us and teaches us to love, thereby transforming us into kingdom rulers who think and feel as He does. Jesus became King on the cross; as His followers we learn to rule with Him on our own daily crosses (Luke 9:23-25), not through fighting for dominance in the political and/or religious arena. It is in the weak and the foolish acts and attitudes of obedience to the God who gave Himself in love to the undeserving that His kingdom is spread and manifested in the earth today.

Could we today be at a critical moment in God's story in which the contrary blowing winds are gathering strength again? On the one hand there is the political storm of the present empire raging under the strong pressure of western culture and thinking, willing to oppress and suppress whatever gets in the way of its dominance; on the other hand there is the religious wind howling for God to intervene in the ways that will keep the religious systems in power; and then there is God's wind that comes in from an oblique and totally unexpected angle. He has never done the expected. Now, after the victory of Jesus over Satan, the spiritual rulers and authorities have been disarmed but they continue to "huff and puff" in hopes of tricking Jesus' followers into waging war according to the systems of the world. Will we His followers recognize and follow Jesus' transcendent ways that make us look like losers? Will the world see the crucified Lord in us or a religious power system?

May we be those who, like Jesus, can interpret the wind of God's Spirit in our day and align ourselves with His cross-like way and therein demonstrate what His kingdom looks like and how the true King rules in self-giving love and what it will be like when that kingdom comes in its full manifestation one day. It will probably  mean the capsizing of the Christendom ship, but on the other side of the storm, we will find that He is there and remains steadfast and that His ways are infinitely higher and better than ours!

Right-brain Grip of Certitude

Earlier this year I worked through the book, The Bible Made Impossible, by Christian Smith on this blog. So much has that book impacted me that I continue exploring the premise of the book and am finding many serious Bible scholars saying similar things about scripture that Smith does. I've been looking for writings on this topic that are in simpler language, and at the end of my final post about The Bible Made Impossible I listed some other books along these lines: (http://nitasbookclub.blogspot.com/2012/03/afterthoughts-bible-made-impossible.html) 
I'd like to recommend another book which is very readable: Sacred Word, Broken Word by Kenneth Sparks:  http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Word-Broken-Authority-Scripture/dp/0802867189/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344114293&sr=8-1&keywords=sacred+word+broken+word

Just this week I came across one of the clearest and easiest-to-understand articles on this topic that I've read thus far (and I've read many). The author is Jeff Clarke, and the following is a short portion from it:

"...Scripture is not a depository of propositional truth statements to be mined, but a witness to God's gracious and redemptive activity. Scripture is story, a redemptive story, that seeks to draw people in and invite them to become part of what God is doing in the world...We need to allow scripture to be free of our right-brain grip of certitude and learn the art of embracing the openness and ambiguity of the story and its characters. If God isn't afraid of the human ambiguity in scripture, why should we be? We've been given what we need to know to make us wise to salvation; filled as it is with parable, paradox and punctuations of uncertainty…
We need not fear imperfection, but learn to embrace the perfect One within it - Jesus, the Living Word…"

I heartily recommend reading the entire article for the context of this quote; you can find it here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thepangeablog/2012/08/03/embracing-the-humanity-of-the-bible-listening-for-the-divine-through-human-words/

Simply Jesus - Chapter 15 "Jesus, the Ruler of the World"

We've come to the final chapter of this beautiful book about Jesus: Simply Jesus, Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters. Drawing from the material presented in the previous chapters, N.T. Wright concludes his book in chapter 15 by answering questions such as, "What on earth does it mean today to say that Jesus is king, that he is Lord of the world?...What is he doing in the midst of the dangerous clash of the new secularisms and the new fundamentalisms?..."

The author suggests that there are four typical responses among Christians to what all of this means:
1)  It's about a private spiritual experience having nothing to do with the real and public world.
2)  Jesus will be Lord one day but He's not really Lord yet.
3)  Jesus is now in charge of the world and we need to see how God is working in the world (through social movements) and join in on such movements. (This response tends towards "pantheism", seeing God and the world collapsing into one another.)
4)  Jesus is now in charge but what is needed is a fresh word from God and to be fortified against all human powers and idolatries. (This response tends towards "dualism", seeing God and the world divided by a great gulf.)
In both the third and fourth responses, Jesus' present lordship is recognized but there is disagreement about how His lordship is to be worked out in the world today.

Wright emphasizes that "when we think about God's kingdom in the present and the future, we must always be clear that the ultimate triumph is God's work and God's alone..."  Only God builds God's kingdom. However, we are called to work and build for His kingdom and what we do counts for the future eternal structure even though we can't see how right now.

The following are some highlights from the chapter:

• As he originally intended, God does His work through people, the church, but the church is not supposed to be a society of perfect people doing great work. "It's a society of forgiven sinners repaying their unpayable debt of love by working for Jesus's kingdom in every way that they can..."
• One way that Jesus exercises His lordship today is through His strange and often secret sovereignty over the nations and rulers of the earth. He does this in the following ways: 1) God's plan to operate through humans applies here as much as elsewhere, and if a ruler is not God-fearing, it does not mean that they are not performing a task God wants performed;  2) even when a ruler may be wicked, God can bend their thinking and imaginings to serve His purpose;  3) God will call the nations to account; this will happen eventually when the Messiah returns to complete what He has started, but in the present world, one of the church's primary roles is to hold the world to account.
• The church's task to hold the world to account is not primarily through political means, as Christians in modern western democracies have tended to think. The church "must weigh it (whatever the government does), sift it, hold it to account, affirm what can be affirmed, point out things that are lacking or not quite in focus, critique what needs critiquing, and denounce what needs denouncing...in the early centuries of church history, the Christian bishops gained a reputation of being the champions of the poor. They spoke up for their rights; they spoke out against those who would abuse and ill-treat them..."
• The church has allowed the government to do what is primarily our assignment, and that is to care for the disenfranchised and the poor. 

In summing up the chapter and book, Wright says that through His life and death and resurrection and ascension, Jesus is King of the world now; heaven and earth have joined in Christ Jesus and in those in whom He dwells. The full manifestation of this will come when He returns to earth again one day. Meanwhile, He has called His people to walk out this joining of heaven and earth by walking as He did: first in holding the powers and authorities of the universe accountable as subject to Jesus, and second by doing the "millions of things that the church should be getting into that the rulers of the world either don't bother about or don't have the resources to support..." And we do these things in the context of prayer and worship, claiming the victory He has won.

I'll end with some of Wright's final words: "The poor in spirit will be making the kingdom of heaven happen. The meek will be taking over the earth, so gently that the powerful won't notice until it's too late. The peacemakers will be putting the arms manufacturers out of business. Those who are hungry and thirsty for God's justice will be analyzing government policy and legal rulings and speaking up on behalf of those at the bottom of the pile. The merciful will be surprising everybody by showing that there is a different way to do human relations other than being judgmental and eager to put everyone else down. 'You are the light of the world,' said Jesus. 'You are the salt of the earth.' He was announcing a program yet to be completed. he was inviting his hearers, then and now, to join him in making it happen. This is, quite simply, what it looks like when Jesus is enthroned."

Divine Beauty out of Consummate Ugliness

Thomas Dubay is author of a powerful book about the beauty of God in Jesus entitled "The Evidential Power of Beauty." As we're about to complete going through N.T. Wright's book about Jesus, I want to share a short portion from Dubay's book:

"Far, far beyond all created beauties, breathtaking as we have seen them to be..., is the divine glory that shines out from this unsurpassable love found in the torture of Holy Week. Perfection himself whipped to blood, crowned with thorns, mocked, spit upon, ridiculed, nailed, pierced - all because he loves you and me, who have in return sinned against him. In this consummate ugliness, this unspeakable outrage, shines a picture of divine beauty immeasurably beyond all earthly splendors..."