Philippians 1:21 says: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”
Its taken months upon end for me to be able to, and be comfortable with, explaining in words what it is about Christianity today that drives me absolutely nuts. I guess I’ve always been so scared of vocalizing such frustrations for fear of metaphorical excommunication or being shunned from a place so “accepting” as the church. Don’t get me wrong I’m not out to bash the very nature of the church today or claim I have a better solution, because to be completely honest, I don’t. But let me say this. My greatest fear is that the current motivation (whether we know it or not) of the church seems to be to get christians to be more comfortable with Christ, or the place “in which He dwells.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but last time I checked, Paul’s journey through life was anything but comfortable. I vividly remember reading his letters from prison in Philippians, or hearing of his multiple times wearing chains for the word he spread. I know its rather hard for us to imagine a place where we could not freely or openly talk about our faith. A place where prayers before meals would look more like silent implications across the table because you never know who’s watching. Or having our homes raided in suspicion of supporting the underground church. I can’t imagine a world where every word that came out of our mouths had to be consciously censored for religious propaganda so that you wouldn’t be hauled off to jail. You may have heard stories about the treacherous Roman Colosseum where hundreds of Christians were burned alive at the stake for friday night entertainment and used to light Caesars gardens at dinner parties. Can you imagine a world like that today? Well believe it or not…it exists.
Those were the Christians we looked up to in our past. The ones who burned at the stake for the sake of the gospel. The ones who were ripped to shreds by lions for sport. The ones who were more than likely rapped, ravaged, and then murdered because they refused to deny the name of Jesus before a “god” in Roman culture. Let me ask you this…
Do we look anything like our brothers and sisters before us?
Don’t get me wrong there are hundreds upon hundreds of modern day martyrs who have died for the sake of the gospel. To name a few: Jim Elliot and his team, and even more recently Gracia (survived) and Mark Burnham (May he rest in God’s presence).
It seems as though we are in a constant state of bandaging our wounds of failure and sin, and hiding our scars of our past mistakes for fear of judgement and condemnation. What we often fail to remember is that Christ took two to the hands, one to the feet, one to the head, and one to the side, so that everyone who has wounds could be healed, and everyone who has scars can be comforted. We seem to think come sunday morning we need to look our best to cover our scars, and take communion in order to bandage our wounds. Please don’t misread this part, communion is very important to me and I believe in the power of being reminded of the promise of Christ’s body and blood. But as for what it represents, if we treat it as some kind of remedy for making everything ok the minute we step into church, and walk out feeling fine and refreshed, I believe we are utterly missing the point.
I guess you could say I have a philosophy of the broken. The idea that in our brokenness we are more connected with Christ then when we are pretending to be “put together.” Lest we forget that even Christ, in all his glory, was broken too. We are all a bloody mess, broken to the core, whether we choose to realize it or not. But I can’t help but wonder why we chase some of the stupid things we do. You can build a bigger hospital, but that does nothing if you have no doctors.
So why letters of a cynic? I have always been told my cynicism will catch up with me and bite me in the rear one day; I’m looking forward to that day. I have to be completely honest, I hope my cynical thinking only doesn’t go away…BUT…before you write me off as a typical sarcastic cynical writer, please hear me out on this. I believe cynicism is method of thinking that only looks objectively, without positive or negative bias, at reality. I can’t say I’m going to be right all the time, so forgive my human nature. My prayer is this: that I will be able to look at things from a logical standpoint and think about reality with an unbiased nature, and that I will NOT react with cynicism but with love.
So please feel free to comment, critique, process through, and analyze what I write. Please know I will more than likely respond to your comments. This is absolutely crucial: These are only theories and ideas thrown into a blog, not theological facts proven to be true. I am merely a confused soul trying to figure out what it means to be a Christ follower in a culture where “Christianity” isn’t so popular.
p.s. feel free to throw out ideas on blog topics or questions you want to hear my input on. I’d love to hear from you.
His Hands and Feet,
Jeff
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