Dear Cell, last Friday we talked about “hot air balloon” Christians. These are Christians whose words are louder than their actions. They make many promises but do little to fulfill them. They are blank-cheque Christians whose bank balances are as empty as their claims. We should be mindful of them lest we become like them. Talk is indeed cheap. Action is golden. GK Chesterton once wrote, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and not tried.” The worst label you can hang on a Christian is the word “hypocrite.” It basically costs little to be a hypocrite. Nothing much is expected of you as a hypocrite. The only requirement to qualify as one is to never cease to not practise what you preach. It is therefore easy to be a hypocrite but difficult to be authentic. That is why the words of GK Chesterton are so haunting for us as Christians living in a world where the temptation to inaction, the seduction of indifference, and the lull of personal convenience are so strong and irresistible.
Sadly, the life of Jesus is a life of great personal challenge and none of us should take it lightly and for granted. When Jesus made the personal call to carry the cross and follow him, he is not inviting us to live a life of smooth sailing, conveniences and luxury. It is not an invitation to treat, a call to pleasure or an offer for lifetime enjoyment. The cross is heavy not so much to the body but to the spirit and the soul. The weight comes in the form of a genuine heart transformation and not a change of external circumstances. Let me explain. Jesus did issue a promise to us. This promise is that we will have abundant life and have it more abundantly when we believe in Him. But what is this abundant life? What does an abundant life entail? Does it mean a life of exceeding wealth, good health and success guaranteed?
Well, this is the shocker…it encompasses much more than that. An abundant life is more than wealth and health. It is more than material success. But here is the qualification. What I mean by “an abundant life is more than wealth and health” is that we may not necessarily be wealthy and healthy by becoming a Christian. But, and here’s the cruncher, we are more than wealthy and healthy when we truly experience a genuine heart transformation. Many Christians do not see it this way because it is so unattractive and unappealing. Where is the "bait" for evangelizing to a non-believer by telling him that a Christian will have trouble just like anyone else? What’s the catch for a non-believer if we tell him that there is just as much chance that he will die poor as he will die rich? Or he will die young? Or he will die under the randomized hand of cancer, heart attack or stroke?
Beloved, I am a Christian realist. Another name for a Christian realist is “Beatitudians”. My faith is based on the reality and profundity of Jesus’ teachings in the Sermons of the Mount (Matthew 5:3-10). If you take the time to read these few verses, you will note that Jesus had specifically reserved a list of blessings for those who demonstrate certain qualities in their Christian life. Some of these qualities are a broken spirit, a mournful soul, a humble heart and a desire for righteousness. These are the qualities that Jesus said will be the recipients of his Father’s blessings. In fact, there is even a blessing reserved for those who are persecuted for righteousness and the blessing is spelt out as the gift of God’s eternal kingdom of heaven. The ultimate reward is our eternal rest in heaven (Matthew 5:12). So, where are the blessings for getting rich, being famous, living a long life? There are none and they are secondary to those blessings listed by Jesus in the Sermon of the Mount.
Of course, I am not against wealth and good health. On the contrary, I believe that Christians are just as entitled to them as non-believers. But, what I am against as a Christian realist is the unbalanced sermonizing that wealth and good health are the inalienable entitlements of all Christians and if we do not have them in the long haul, then there is something terribly wrong with us. This message is contrary to what Jesus has taught us in the Beatitudes. We should not forget that wealth and health are not synonymous with faith. The truth is, I have heard of and seen many wealthy good Christians living to a ripe old age as well as poor ones dying young. If you read about the history of Christian martyrs in China, you will see true faith in action, some of whom had given their lives in sacrifice to God with nothing to their names – not a nickel, not a dime. They died admirable deaths, suffered nobly in the face of torture, and lived without wealth or chattels, many whose names will never be known or documented, except in the Book of Life.
I sincerely believe that the quality of our faith as a Christian is in the changing of our character for God, that is, to be more Christ-like, to seek after His righteousness, and to live with a pure heart. Ultimately, the goal of a life well-lived for God will be one where we are able to profess these words with conviction, “Whatever to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in Him.” (Phil. 3:7-9). I guess our disappointments in Christian life come from unmet expectations and these unmet expectations are a result of pegging our hope to better circumstances rather than a better character. We must come to a point to accept that things are not going to change for the better just because we are believers. It is just plain wrong to expect problems to magically disappear, sickness to vaporize, and relationships to be restored upon our petitioning them to God. Well, I am not saying that our problems will remain unresolved when we do petition them to God. But I am saying that we are not in heaven yet and we cannot expect bad things to go away instantaneously just because we pray against them.
As a Christian realist, our hope is not in the reality that our life is going to be a bed of roses. In all probability, it will not be. We are all going through our own personal struggles to live an authentic Christian life. At the cell, we identified four inner struggles we all face. The first struggle is the overcrowding of our soul and the common refrain here is this: “I’m too busy”. Indeed, our busyness distracts and disrupts us from other worthy pursuits in our life. In our busyness, we have forgotten what is important and what is not. In our busyness, we have subconsciously surrendered all control and aspects of our life to our work. In the end, we have no time for God. Once we were firebrand for God. Now, we are drenched charcoal. When we have little time for God, we reduce our religion to the practice of what CS Lewis call, “parachute theology”. Our religion now becomes like a parachute strapped to our back. And we will never bother to use it unless and until a crisis strike. For some, they may even bring their unopened parachute to their grave.
This parachute theology also reduces our relationship to God into a commercialized one. We gradually treat our religion as a transaction for self-benefit. God then becomes a Santa Claus character. Soon, we will come to God expecting more from Him rather than offering ourselves to Him. God then becomes the God of our wants who is at our beck and call. Patrick Morley, the author of Seven Seasons of the Man in the Mirror, wrote, “There is a God we want, and there is a God who is. They are not the same. The turning point of our lives is when we stop seeking the God we want and start seeking the God who is.” Beloved, this is what we must guard against: To see God as a vending machine rather than a passionate Creator who deeply desires our communion with Him. It is time to take time in our own hands and reprioritize our life. We control our time; we determine our focus. We must make an effort to return to God and to develop a relationship with Him instead of treating Him as just a dispenser of good gifts and nothing more.
Our second struggle is that of the cynicism of the mind and the customary complaint here is, “I doubt”. We all have doubts; at one time or another. By doubting, we are actually admitting to God that we are trying to understand Him through our limited, finite human mind. Alas, no one can fully understand God, or comprehend His ways, His mind and His plan. I have my doubts too. But such doubts are even greater when I remove God out of the equation and place my trust on science to offer the better answer to our existence and our origin. Science alone does not have the better answer. Science can only answer the “how” and not the “Why”. Science alone cannot answer questions pertaining to the meaning of life and how we came about. It may be within the province of science to tally up the physical laws of this world but not the “law” of love and the “rules” of human creativity and consciousness. Surely, science cannot encapsulate all of a person’s rich personal experiences into a formula or an equation.
In the end, all my atheistic searches lead me back to the open arms of my savior and to His assurance that He will one day give me a full account of everything so as to reconcile all my doubts with full understanding.
The third struggle is the paralysis of the will and it comes with this usual utterance, “I can’t”. Beloved, we have altogether lost a sense of divine urgency in our pursuit of all things spiritual. We need to take a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday grinding and start to ask ourselves these questions: What really matters to us? What would we really like to accomplish? What legacy would we like to leave behind? Until we can answer them and answer them with conviction, we can stop making or renewing new-year resolutions because we will never fulfill them. Without an underlying motivation for our actions, all our new-year resolutions will just remain as wishful thinking and die stillborn. We have to seek out our first love for God and renew our passion before we can live an exemplary and victorious life. This is our basic Christian responsibility and to settle for anything less is to squander our opportunities for growth in our Christian walk. At this point, a relevant saying comes to mind, “In order to reach the moon, it makes a difference which way you point your rocket, up or down.” By the same token, in order to live a victorious Christian life, it matters where you direct your efforts, towards a sustaining and rewarding relationship with God or to go the opposite way. Although it is merely one choice away, it would be the greatest and toughest choice you will ever make in this life. So, press hard for it.
The last struggle is the primal wounds of the heart and the typical expression is “I’m hurt.” All of us are hurt in some ways. For some, our emotional wounds are still unhealed and bleeding. There are just too many things we do not understand about our hurts, and why they should come at such a bad time and stay with us for so long. We sometimes blame ourselves for our pain. At other times, we even blame God. There is just no one-size-fit-all answer to all our pain and sufferings. Our pain is individually felt and personally experienced and we will have to meet God on this very individual and personal level. In other words, we just have to deal with them on our own; confronting God for assurance and asking for strength and peace to carry us through.
Recently I read a story told by DL Moody that inspired me to look at our personal sufferings from a fresh perspective. It is hoped that the story below will make you see your trials differently and imbue in your spirit the strength and hope to brave through your own afflictions.
“Dr Andrew Bonar told me how, in the Highlands of Scotland, a sheep would often wander off into the rocks and get into places that they couldn’t get out of. The grass on these mountains is very sweet and the sheep like it, and they will jump down ten or twelve feet, and then they can’t jump back again and the shepherd hears them bleating in distress. They may be there for days, until they have eaten all the grass. The shepherd will wait until they are faint that they cannot stand, and then they will put a rope around him, and he will go over and pull that sheep up out of the jaws of death.
“Why don’t they go down there when the sheep first gets there?” asked Moody.
“Ah!” he said, “they are so very foolish they would dash right over the precipice and be killed if they did.”
Moody then concludes this story by saying,
“And that is the way with men; they won’t go back to God till they have no friends and have lost everything. If you are a wanderer I tell you that the Good Shepherd will bring you back the moment you have given up trying to save yourself and are willing to let Him save you His own way.”
Beloved, God is saving you in His own way. Perhaps you should let go now and let God rope you up from your abyss. Cease struggling to break free from your trial with your own strength and learn to rest in the saving arms of the Good Shepherd.
Have a restful week ahead.
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