I’ve been thinking over some stuff recently, and I wrote this which I’ve posted on the Cardiff CU message board:
How dare we turn Christianity into the respectable, sanitized and insipid parody of the radical teachings of Jesus Christ that we so often live today? Christianity shouldn’t be something nice and polite and middle class. Look at the heroes of the faith, described in Hebrews 11:
“They were stoned; they were sawn in two; they were put to the death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and ill-treaded – the world was not worthy of them!”
We need to regain something of the awe and terror of coming into the holy presence of almighty perfect God. We need that faith that enables us to proclaim the Gospel boldly. Like the Caleb and Joshua of the Bible, to have the nerve through faith to go and take possession of the promised land, since if God is with us, we can certainly do it. Christians awake! Let us rise up and live lives of faith, transformed by Christ, lives of love and holiness.
I know how hard this is. I’m not trying to say that I’m any better at this than anyone else. It’s because I know how difficult this is I am so concerned about this, and I appeal to you to join together in supporting each other because I know my own heart and how easy it is to just let things slide. Any change needs to be rooted in the fundamentals of coming as individuals to God daily in prayer and worship and Bible study. But if that’s the basis ofr the change in our hearts, it needs also to have an effect and be worked out in every area of our lives.
How about our possessions? There isn’t anything inherently wrong with them, and the Biblical teaching is stewardship – personally owning possessions to use for the common good in the service of God. However, Jesus is very clear that he must be lord of our lives. Can we really say that we put him first over our television, our books, our DVDs, our money, our CDs and so on? We need . We also need to be a light to the world, to show up its false values and thinking by the word of God, both taught and put into practice in our lives.
I’m deadly serious now; I’m not trying to be flippant, so let’s discuss this seriously in the light of God’s word and our duty to love and holiness, but don’t you think it would be very good both for us putting God first in our lives and as a visible sign to the world, to go through our possessions, take out all that we have no real need or use for, and either give it away or sell it to give the money to those in need? The more visible the better – my first idea was a bonfire outside the Students’ Union, but I thought that rather wasteful and it could be misinterpreted as a narrow-minded book-burning type of action. We must, of course, be careful to be humble, and not to do this for our own glory, but we also need to show the world how wrong they’ve got it and how their way of life is not the only way.
Also, in what ways can we live more simply and ethically, both because of the moral rightness of not living excessively, and as a way of showing the world that you don’t need to spend loads of money on entertainment, clothes, food and so on. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important the food, and the body more important than clothes?”
Other things too – those are just a couple of suggestions to get us started. How can we really put into practice the teachings of Jesus? How can we restructure our lives so the Gospel is the very foundation for the way we act and think, and not something we try and add on as an afterthought? How can we be the church as the church should be, a genuine, loving community of believers, which isn’t a closed-off clique, but is part of the wider community and reaches out to it?
Please, please, don’t answer with a glib “Yes, Caleb, very nice, but in the real world…” type response. We need to reach the world for Christ, have our lives transformed, not just add a veneer of Christianity on top of the way everyone else lives. My suggestions might well not be the best way of going about things, but I’m pretty sure we’ve got it drastically wrong at the moment, so let’s work out what is the right way to live the lives of love and obedience God calls us to.
I’m fed up with the “spiritual schizophrenia” in my life. The things I believe, the beliefs I profess, the songs I sing, are wonderful, beautiful things, but they penetrate my life so superficially. The church, although there are a lot of people who are very sincere, devoted and lovely people, is often and in many ways weak, disengaged from our culture and communities, superficial and really not all that different from the rest of the world. I want to see us bringing glory to God, having our entire lives and communities transformed by him, for us to be knitted together by love.
When I read passages like “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men”, and “You are the light of the world…”, it honestly makes me want to weep. There’s a world that’s dying out there, but are we bringing the Gospel to it effectively? How much do we even really care? Perhaps you are, which is one of the reasons why I bring up these questions, because I just feel so very inadequate, and sadly it doesn’t seem to me that we’re doing a very good job.
God help us.
