Over the last year or so, I have noted a slow transition in the focus of my writing. I have moved from criticism and cynicism (sometimes rather severe) toward subjects related to my interior life and what God is doing to remake me into one of His. More Christians are likely to track with me now than when I was writing about “all that was wrong with Christendom.” Since the nature of my compositions is shifting, it seemed appropriate to move to another blog, one that will not be anonymous, but open to a larger audience (my small group, for example.)

So that interested parties might know “where I’m coming from,” I have copied about 20 posts from this blog to the new one. These are posts that I consider to be the most important and formative in my journey, posts that remain highly prominent in my thinking to this day.

Finally, for those of you who have been following me throughout, thank you for your support and your comments. And I hope that you will continue to pray for me (us, really!), that  our “love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help [us] to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ [we] may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

Click here to go to the new blog:
http://hebendsdown.wordpress.com

Only one life,’ twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

This hymn is typically sung at the end of a sermon on personal evangelism. The text for the sermon is usually I Cor 3:11-13:

For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.

The sermon’s message is clear: personal witnessing is the most important activity of your life and everything else you do pales in comparison. Therefore, if you don’t want to waste your life, start witnessing and getting as many people as you can into the Kingdom. That is what will make your life worthwhile.

A pastor who engages in evangelism and discipling can immediately justify the eternal worth of his life’s work (it’s usually a “his”). The Biblical principle that is presumably invoked is that those engaged in ministry are doing God’s work. How common is it that a young person says, “I don’t want to waste my life. I’ll go to seminary to train for a job that will allow me to do God’s work full time”? But, what about the rest of us, who have “worldly” jobs that consume eight or more hours of our day engaged in activities that have nothing obvious to do with the Kingdom of God? Are we truly wasting our lives? An answer in the affirmative lurks like a demon below the surface.  Even if we share the gospel with people on a routine basis while on the job (something that is rare, indeed!), the vast majority of our time is consumed doing something other than God’s work. The typical congregant, listening to an “only what’s done for Christ will last” sermon is bound to accept a large amount of guilt, but is not likely to change his or her life.

As if psychologically stifling guilt were not enough, there are other serious problems stemming from the “only what’s done for Christ” approach to life as we generally understand it. Many Christians deal with the guilt by giving money to those who are engaged in God’s work, and the more money we earn, the better! But let’s tell the truth: does high income actually translate into a high level of support for Christian workers? Surveys indicate that more than 50% of Christians donate little or nothing to their church’s ministries and, on average, Christian giving hovers around 3% of income, falling rather far short of the proverbial tithe of 10%. Not only does our work lack intrinsic worth, we are largely unsuccessful at rescuing it’s worth by sacrificial giving for the sake of the Kingdom.

There is yet another consequence of the “only what’s done for Christ” sermon that is rather serious, partly because it is so subtle. We think that, if we’re not engaged in God’s work, our jobs are worthless in an eternal sense. “It won’t last” means that whatever we accomplish in our jobs will be burned up in the end, so from an eternal standpoint, our jobs make no real or permanent difference. Being fully convinced of this perspective precludes any attempt at discerning whether or not our jobs might actually be God’s work. We are robbed, thereby, of the possibility that God is actually interested in what we do from day to day, with consequences that are far reaching. Those Christians inclined to pray at all find it easy to justify supporting a pastor’s sermon preparation in prayer, but praying for a mom who must grocery-shop for the family at the same frequency that a pastor delivers a sermon seems like a waste. Surely, God is far more interested in this week’s sermon that the food that mom picks up at the store.

Swirling around this whole problem is the sacred-secular dualism. We have cleverly, and to our near destruction, partitioned life into the sacred and secular, when God makes no such division. Consequently, we see God’s work as being distinct from all other work: only what’s done for Christ will last, and the rest is an utter waste of time.¹ Since most of us are not missionaries or pastors, engaged full time in God’s work, then, by definition, most of us are wasting our lives as we trudge off to work every day to jobs that don’t hold a lot of meaning for ourselves, God, or the future. If this is true, then millions upon millions of Christians need to quit their jobs and becoming full-time Christian workers.

There is an alternative, though. We could decide that the whole construct is wrong-headed and contrary to Scripture, and then figure out a truly Biblical understanding of God’s work.

Any thoughts?

¹ If you have any lingering doubts about the fact that we divide work into God’s work and other work, then consider this. Who has the more important job? Is it the man who lives in a foreign country whose sole mission in life is to plant churches amongst a people who would otherwise have no hope of hearing the gospel? Or is it a school teacher in the United States? The knee jerk response would be, of course, the former. Let’s put the problem in stronger relief. A young person comes to you and says, “I really want to do God’s work.” Would not the general recommendation be that this person check into seminaries or do an internship in a church ministry? Who amongst us would suggest that, if he really wants to do God’s work, he should become a garbage collector?

The LORD performs righteous deeds
And judgments for all who are oppressed.
(Ps 103:6)

God executes judgment for all the oppressed, but how can this be? Neither history nor personal experience seem to corroborate this assertion. In fact, God’s own people, generation after generation, spent 430 years in slavery under the oppressive hand of the Egyptians. No doubt, even fifty years into this 430-year period of slavery, the Jews were wondering about the claim that God is on the side of the oppressed.

If the Bible communicates truth about God and the universe in which we live, then Ps 103:6 must be entirely compatible, not just with the Jewish slavery in Egypt, but with similarly difficult situations in our own lives. But, harmonizing Biblical doctrine with real life can be downright difficult. When hard times come, and they invariably do, we are told to cheer up, because “God causes all things to work together for good for those who love Him.” Tell that to someone who, 400 years before Moses showed up on the scene, died without hope that the Jews’ lot in life would ever change. Better yet, quote Romans 8:28 to a Jew whose grandparents died in a German concentration camp during WWII. Platitudes, especially  Biblical ones, fall on deaf ears. It is too easy to cite the Exodus as evidence of the truth of passages like Ps 103 and Romans 8 because we know the end of the story. And as the saying goes, all’s well that ends well. If it were not for the Exodus, there would not have been a Moses, a Torah, a temple, the prophets, the Christ. When it comes to post-biblical events, though, we do not have the luxury of hindsight, so we are left on our own to decipher their meaning and significance. Frequently, we draw devastatingly wrong conclusions. I have a Jewish friend who told me, “I don’t believe in God for one reason: the Holocaust.”

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“I don’t believe in God because…” What follows the ellipsis varies from person to person, but at bottom, the issue is a refusal to acknowledge the presence and the rule of God. That “things happen,” like the Exodus or the Holocaust, does not make belief in God harder. The shoe is on the wrong foot. Lack of belief in God makes it impossible to come to terms with the Exodus and the Holocaust. Every one of us has faced challenges and adversities, though they may pale in comparison to the Holocaust. How we think about our “everyday” adversities will inform us about our views of the Holocaust and other horrendous events in human history, which are practically without number.

In the midst of adversity, my natural tendency is to focus on my own fear and pain, which makes me a slave to adversity, unable to live free inside of it. Rather, I need to practice living in a place where God is central and I need to do this when life is reasonably good so that when hard times come, and they will, I will be ready. What does “God is central” mean? It means that His plans are the important ones. His ends need to be my ends. He tends to me because He wants me, not because He wants to coddle me and meet my every whim. He loves me, which is to say that He wants me for Himself and for His glory, not so that I will be a success as defined in my own corrupt eyes. He loves me for me; I must love Him, for Him, which is an arrangement that sounds a lot like marriage.

Let’s take two people who, presumably in love, are seeking the unity of marriage. While it is incredible to the rest of us, invariably, a newly-minted married couple believes that life together will be bliss. At the wedding, hope abounds, and the vow that each repeats to the other seems to them nothing more than a formality, really: “for better or worse…” Soon, though, life happens and half the couples bail on the vow and each other. Drawing from Ephesians 5 (not to mention many Old Testament passages), marriage is like the relationship that we have with our God. In the context of a commitment to unity with God, the serious disciple makes the same vow as a married couple: “for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.” But, sooner or later, everyone comes face to face a frustratingly difficult question: if God is all-powerful, then how does the worse, the poorer, and the sickness every happen, never mind the Exodus and the Holocaust?

Sin has wrecked our world. Unless we accept this basic tenet of the Scriptures, we cannot make sense out of the Holocaust. And, frankly, we cannot make sense out of anything else, either. An uncountable number of horrors, large and small, have resulted from sin, and the bombardment is relentless. Day after day, month after month, decade after decade, millennia after millennia, sin penetrates and devastates our lives and our world. There are the obvious consequences of sin: dictators; drug dealers; muggings and murder; wars and other disputes between countries and groups. Sin also has consequences that I might not think about:  the polluted air that I breathe every day; food that clogs my arteries; unequal (unfair) distribution of food, electricity, vaccines, education, the Internet, washing machines and flush toilets; being forced to pay (by taxes) for weapon systems that will kill thousands, if not millions, of people; advertising that very effectively convinces me that having some created thing is better than having the Creator, Himself; sensual pleasures that supplant spiritual joy and consolation; lies that attack our very faith in God every day. Do you own a cell phone? Think about this…

There is virtually no end to the list of the price we have paid for sin in our lives and our world.

After the Romans arrogantly nailed God to a cross, just to get rid of Him, can we imagine that there is any  boundary or limit to sin? Should I even be surprised at my own sin? If I am surprised at anything, it is that God did not immediately effect a permanent and severe penalty for my very first sin, as He did for Satan and his angels.  Imagine this for a moment: the Roman soldiers, after nailing God’s only Son to the wooden beams, stand the cross up in a hole in the ground. With a thud, the vertical beam strikes the bottom of the hole and Jesus feels the jolt through every joint in his body; the crude nails rip at his flesh and splinters dig into his back. The Father, watching all this from heaven, is getting more and more furious that the Romans are treating His thoroughly holy and innocent Son unjustly, and with scorn and contempt. The Father sent the Son to love people and then those same people are treating him horribly. In a flash of anger, the Father destroys the entire Roman Empire in one second. Gone is the mighty Roman Empire, its people, government, and institutions. Nicodemus and Joseph take Christ down off the cross. Together with Mary, they tend to his wounds.

If you can tell me why God did not stop the crucifixion of His precious Son in whom He was well pleased, I will tell you why He does not stop sin from wrecking our world and our lives. In the meantime, in submission to the wisdom of God, who is able to turn evil into good, for there is no one more powerful than He, my prayer must be… therefore, whether I live or die, I am the Lord’s.

First, our society has interpreted as social or political or economic malfunctions many actions and attitudes that should be classified as sin. For example, in the West, we consume resources at an alarming rate, while our brothers in most of the rest of the world suffer for lack of basic needs such as adequate housing, clean water, balanced diets, and basic health care. We blame this on governmental inefficiency, but we do not name it as sin. Examples very likely abound, but we are so steeped in our own culture that identifying systematic sin is very difficult apart from the light of God.

Second, amongst religious people, sin has become a private affair, a matter between me and God. We thereby are blinded to the truth that our interior behavior contributes to the righteousness or to the sinfulness of the world around us.

Third, our society has trivialized grave wrongdoing by changing its name, or by saying, “Everyone does it,” or “It’s just the way our culture is,” or “It happens,” or even, “That’s the way God made me.” Such attitudes provide an excuse to rename sin, effectively softening or eliminating the seriousness of the offense. As Bridges observes, “People no longer commit adultery: instead they have an affair. Corporate executives do not steal: they commit fraud.”

If we explain away or otherwise minimize sin, one must wonder if we are even sure what sin is, considering the emphasis that the Bible puts on it. In general, we understand sin in the context of God having given us moral law. Breaking God’s law is simply wrong and we call it sin. To avoid sin, it would seem quite reasonable to focus on the law, asking, “What does God want me to do?” But, we immediately run into some frustrating roadblocks. First, our personal histories, the history of Israel, and the Scriptures themselves, provide ample evidence that obedience to the law is extraordinarily difficult. Impossible is the biblical characterization.

As serious as this is, there is yet another problem that is even more concerning because it effectively “locks people out of the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 23:13, NRSV) Jesus said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain.” He spoke these words directly to a group of Pharisees, people who excelled at obedience to the law. That Jesus spoke such harsh words to a group of people who kept the Law better than anyone in Jewish history indicates that, despite their faithfulness to the law, they were missing something crucially important: “…their hearts are far from me.” We must be careful to note that Jesus acknowledges that these distant hearts engaged in the worship of God! In this declaration, Jesus highlighted a ubiquitous problem, which is religious activity that is carried out in the absence of God, accompanied by self-deception that zealously justifies the activity. Surprisingly, perfect obedience to the law that effectively excludes God, despite ongoing worship of His holy name, is sin.

As difficult as this may be to hear, it is not the first time that Jesus uttered such a sobering assessment. On another occasion, Jesus said, “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’” (Matt 7:22-23) Jesus will say “I never knew you,” to people who preached his name, cast out demons, and did many good and wonderful things in the name of Christ! The parable of the prodigal son conveys the same message: the older son faithfully obeyed, but he was not truly seeking his Father.

Our inability to keep the law to the satisfaction of God the Eternal Judge is one thing. To miss finding God, at all, is quite another, especially when He has cleared the way to His throne at the great cost of the blood of Christ. Legalism requires that we ask, “If sin amounts to the breaking of God’s law, how else am I to avoid sinning except through obedience?” That is the wrong question, as Jesus made clear to the Pharisees. By the surpassing mercy of God, the sacrifice of the Lamb of God has converted this question from an eternally crucial one to a clearly secondary question. It is not the question that God wants us to ask. The question we should be asking is, “What does God really want?” The answer, surprisingly, is not obedience, first and foremost. The Psalmist wrote, “For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” The story of the prodigal son makes the point clear: God wants my obedience, but He mainly wants me. God wants my obedience, but not if it is based on a sense of religious obligation. He wants a relationship that is grounded in and driven by love for Him.

From this perspective, then, why is sin bad?

First, sin does great harm to me, many times in ways that I never think about or notice. I have told so many lies over the course of my lifetime that one more does not seem such a big deal. Besides, there have been times where telling a small lie makes my life much easier, not harder. How can that be so bad? This is what I mean by not being able to discern the harm that sin does to me. I am like the wife of an alcoholic, who gets beaten half to death every Friday night. When her husband finally dies of cirrhosis of the liver, she remarries… an alcoholic! Such a decision is surprisingly consistent for women in this situation. Of course, it makes no sense to those of us who have not walked in her shoes. Likewise, my lying makes no sense to Jesus. The fact remains that sin has wrecked my life and, because I have never lived in a world without sin, I must pray to God for the wisdom to see the horror of sin in my life and my world.

Second, my sin has the practical effect of keeping me from God, and I lose as a result. Yes, His throne of grace is always available. But I cannot have my cake and eat it, too, or as the apostle Paul put it, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?” Grace may abound, but I must recognize that my sin keeps me from being intimate with God. This becomes more clear when I consider that sin boils down to a desire for something other than God, Himself. The author of the wonderful little booklet, The Cloud of Unknowing, spoke to this: “Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto, look the loath to think on aught but Himself. So that nought work in thy wit, nor in thy will, but only Himself.” The apostle John was similarly straightforward in his admonishment: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” Love for this world, even a little, will keep me from loving God with my whole heart. I pray, therefore, that God would put His finger on the sin that is buried deep in my soul, that keeps me away from His heart.

Third, my sin offends God. Since He is invisible, I cannot ever see the look on His face, or His immediate reaction whenever I do something sinful. However, I have witnessed the reaction of my wife many times as she responded to something I did that offended her. Because I love her, I do not want to offend or hurt her. My love relationship with her provokes me to behave well. It is not a legal obligation, but a desire driven by love. And that is the subject of my prayer, in both my marriage and my relationship with God.

The question is not, “What sin do I need to work on today?” It is, “How can I love God more today than I did yesterday?” The implications of switching one question for the other are life-changing.

And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God. (Phil 1:9-11)

Why is sin bad?

Many sins are clearly bad: murder, adultery, theft, even anger and greed. We’re not so sure about other sins, though: frustration, lack of gratitude, judging, complaining. The knee-jerk answer to the question is, “Sin is bad because it’s sin! God has told us what is right and wrong, therefore sin is wrong.” If left to ourselves, though, would we classify all those behaviors and attitudes as sin? Or, due to a lack of good rationale, would we re-classify some sins. Perhaps we would label them as “survival skills” or “coping mechanisms,” with the implication that not only are some sins not really sinful, but they may even be helpful in making it through life.

What do you think: Why is sin bad?

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In prayer this morning, I was struggling with the question of God’s interest in me, never mind His love for me. I understand, at least in part, what the apostle Paul wrote, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.” Of what use, therefore, am I to God? He is entirely self-sufficient and does not need me for anything. In fact, I am so wicked that I would guess He would be better off without me.

And then my comment to my friend that wintery morning came to mind, only this time, it was phrased differently: “God must think I am worth saving because He sent His own Son to die for me.” But the minor change in wording wasn’t the true emphasis. I know that Jesus died for me. That is not in question. The real issue during this morning’s prayer revolved around why I am worth saving. There is something about me that is so worth saving that God was willing to pay an exorbitant price for me.

That God created me is not a trivial insight, a doctrine suitable only for small children, but is fundamental to understanding anything and everything else about God or life or myself. God created my body and He gave me life. This sounds like a two-step process; maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I separate them to be clear that both came from God. Regardless, God specifically made me, exactly like I am, with my strengths and weakness, my likes and dislikes, my passions and my disinclinations. (None of this is meant to imply that I am sinless, or that God is somehow responsible for my sin.) During the course of my life, like everyone else, to one extent or another, I have wrecked what God originally made. So, from before the foundations of the world and through to the present time, I have been His project. Christ’s redemption is part of that project. That the creative, redemptive, molding interplay between God and me has gone on largely unnoticed during my lifetime is due only to my blindness. Upon deep, prayerful reflection, God’s hand is evident everywhere in my life, and He has a goal. The finished product will be a Van Gogh, a Beethoven, a Shakespeare, a Tolkien… an unrivaled work of art. “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” I prefer to think of God’s activity in my life as a “project” rather than as a “plan” because, in English, the latter implies something static and “set in concrete,” whereas my life feels much more like a project with its characteristic delays and diversions and distractions, midstream changes-of-plan, corrections for bad decisions and ill-advised moves, advances and retreats.

I do not have a vision of it yet, but God sees a finished product in me that was worth every drop of blood that Christ had to give.

And He said, “A man had two sons.“

It is all too easy to miss the fact that there are three main characters in the story about the prodigal son: a man had two sons. If we don’t get stuck on the younger son and all his shenanigans, we might notice the older son. But these sons also had a father. Three people. Three questions.

What did the younger son want?

Material wealth. He had no interest in the father, but thought that he could really live if he had the things that his father had. He wanted to really live, but didn’t know how, so he did the only thing he knew: he got hold of as much wealth as possible and literally ran with it. He found out, as we will all do, sooner or later, that things are absolutely devoid of real life.

What did the older son want?

The older son had spent years serving his father. Why? to position himself so that when the time came, he would receive his father’s blessing and inherit all that he had. His strategy was quite different from that of his younger brother, who made a simple demand of his father. The older son behaved in a much more socially acceptable way. He was the “good” son, the one who obeyed his father in all things. But, ultimately he wanted exactly the same thing that his younger sibling wanted: his father’s goods. “For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me [fill in the blank].” It is easy to identify the error of the younger son. Many parents would die for a son like the older one in this story: compliant and obedient, rather than troublesome and rebellious. No doubt, many of us read about the older son and wonder if he’s really done anything wrong. Neither the younger son nor the older one realized that what the father wanted was what they really wanted, deep down inside their souls. Both sons needed to repent, and rethink their lives in light of what the father wanted.

What did the Father want?

The father wanted his sons to love him, not his wealth or position or what he could do for them. He wanted their respect. He wanted his sons to be faithful to him, to share life with him. He wanted their relationship to be special, intimate even. He wanted a relationship where they would each make sacrifices, gladly, one for the other. He wanted a relationship where each could be his true self, where each could be himself, knowing that when he screwed up, forgiveness would be readily available. He wanted a relationship that was “for better or worse,” one that was “for life.” He wanted his sons to be with him.

The father could force a relationship with each of his sons but not the kind of relationship that he wanted. Within the older son’s heart lived a belief that obedience was key: “Just tell me what you want me to do!” If pressed, the father could give a clear answer in the form of a list of commandments. Ten of them, actually. The younger son asked for the father’s wealth and the father gave it to him. But what the father really wanted was an intimate relationship, one that is based on more than “mooching” or obedience.

The two sons describe a broad segment of Christianity. There are those who are legalists. They know what is expected and they do their very best to perform. To them, Christian “law” is what makes us distinctive and adherence is the singular obligation of every Christian. Then, there are those who see God as poised and ready to meet all their needs and even many of their wants. This attempt at relationship is evident in prayers used almost exclusively to seek solutions for our problems, provision for our needs, and relief from our suffering.

We cannot make an argument that God is not interested in our obedience or our prayers. The problem is that we have made obedience and prayer into ends, not means. The Pharisees saw obedience as an end in itself. We see this in their intense interest in seeing that everyone in society understood the Law and kept it. Likewise, prayer can be an end in itself: prayer for prayer’s sake or even prayer for my sake. But obedience and prayer cannot be ends, for God wants me. Disobedience and lack of prayer will keep me from God, but obedience and prayer will not take me to Him, unless I use them as means to get there.

If I do everything my wife wants: take out the trash, mow the grass, maintain the car, pay the bills, take her on dates, but do not show her respect or do not share my life with her, then we are roommates, not husband and wife. I suspect that women “get” this quicker than men. In fact, in writing this post, I cheated. The first paragraph under “What did the Father want?” came directly out of my wife’s heart, not mine. My understanding of relationships is so bad that I had to ask my wife for insight into “What did the Father want?” And, incredulously, I claim to have a relationship with God?!

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My first post on the prodigal son focused, predictably, on the two sons. After continuing to pray over this story, though, I came to understand that the story is really about the Father. Jesus put the sons in the story to make sure that I understood that the Father’s love was targeted at me. Even if I have difficulty figuring out what a relationship with God looks like, there is no question that He seeks to have a relationship with me. We are not looking for each other like two people who do not realize they are destined to be married. He has already chosen me and nothing will stop Him from moving in my direction. God loves me deeply and has done so ever since before the foundations of the world. It is because of God’s love that I know Christ and believe in Him and in His salvation. Throughout my life, God has been drawing me inexorably to Himself. For 58 years, He has been creating and molding and shaping and redeeming me into one of His sons, a beloved child with whom He will be united for all eternity. Until recently, I have not been aware of His activity in my life, the countless big and small, easy and hard, pleasurable and painful God-originated events that have made me who I am today. He is working and waiting, ever so patiently. I am the one who must move toward Him; but when I do so, I can be assured that He will be there, just as the prodigal’s father was waiting for his own sons.

This is a conclusion to which I’ve come after reading several historical accounts about primitive Christians and the church as it existed until about 180 A.D. That there might be differences between us and them should not be surprising, since life in the West 2000 years later is dramatically different from life in the first century. Examples abound, no doubt.

Primitive Christians did not have church buildings or a New Testament. Christianity was not organized except by the power of the Spirit. Christians met daily, not just on Sundays, for teaching and worship. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper did not have any of the modern day ecclesiastical trappings. Baptism was more like a bath than a ritual, preceded by what amounted to agreement to a soldier’s oath, making a commitment to full participation in the sacrifices and activities of the common community. The Lord’s Supper was an ordinary meal, although the elements (bread and wine) were separated from the rest of the food. Gifts, including food, offered at the so-called Lovemeal, were immediately used to feed the poor, and itinerant prophets and apostles. While pagans and Jews burned their sacrifices, Christians used them to feed the poor.

Until 180 A.D., Christians owned everything in common. If a rich person wanted to join the community, they were instructed to sell their property first, or else they could forget about becoming a Christian. Minucius Felix wrote, “That we for the most part must be considered poor is no disgrace to us but an honor. A life of luxury weakens the spirit. Frugality makes it strong.” The Shepard, a book dating from the first century that almost made it into the New Testament canon, had this to say about the wealthy: “Once their wealth which entices their souls is cut off from them on all sides, they will be useful to God.” People engaged in certain professions presumed to be associated with idolatry or immorality would be rejected by the Christian community unless they forsook their occupations.

The primitive Christians put all their stock in the resurrection. They took literally Christ’s injunction, “take up your cross and follow Me.” By dying Christ’s death with him, literally, they would attain to the resurrection and the Kingdom. They maintained similarly literal views of Paul’s statements about the fellowship of the cross, and Christians being crucified with Christ and raised with him. Polycarp was executed by the Romans in the mid-second century. The Roman proconsul begged Polycarp to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. “Polycarp answered him, ‘You threaten me with a fire that burns but for an hour and goes out after a short time, for you do not know the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment for the godless. Why do you wait? Bring on whatever you will.’” (The Martyrdom of the Holy Polycarp, recorded February 22, A.D. 156) In a frenzy, the crowd in the stadium left to collect wood from shops and homes to fuel a fire for Polycarp. When it came time to nail Polycarp to the stake, he refused, saying, “’Let me be. He who gives me the strength to endure the fire will also give me the strength to remain at the stake unflinching, without the security of your nails.’ …When he had spoken the Amen and finished his prayer, the executioners lit the fire.” (The Martyrdom of the Holy Polycarp)

Most striking about the primitive Christians was their belief in and commitment to the coming Kingdom. They viewed discipleship as a pathway toward a whole new moral and social order that would be brought to bear in its fullness by the return of Christ. They stood firmly against the existing order which was viewed as being superintended by the forces of darkness. They did not live in fear of the prince of the power of the air, though, for Jesus’ crucifixion had already crushed that power. Theirs was not a political movement, however. They knew that unless God intervened, the present order could not be changed. Empowered by the Spirit, Christians served their communities with vigor. They fed the poor, took care of the sick, provided employment for the destitute. In blatant protest against a common practice of their day, they frequently bought and freed slaves, counting such as their brothers. Civil disobedience was passive, enduring everything, even death. The early Christians were revolutionaries, heralding a new world order and a coming Kingdom that would replace the powers of the State. Their certainty about this future was demonstrated by their willingness to suffer as martyrs, a glorious offering of a corruptible body in exchange for resurrected body in the coming Kingdom.

The driving force for primitive Christianity lay in the belief that Christ would return at any minute to establish his Kingdom in righteousness and justice, displacing the current world order entirely. Christians gave everything to get ready for the day. They gave up their possessions and, indeed, their very lives. Neither had any value, except as they might be useful to prepare themselves and as many others as possible for the coming of the Kingdom. They were not afraid of death. The dead in Christ would be raised bodily just as Christ had been, to participate in that Kingdom. Death, therefore, held no sway over Christians, threatened daily with martyrdom, for it guaranteed the experience of the resurrection. They also had no concerns for the long term future. Giving sacrificially to the poor was easy because money and possessions would have no value in the Kingdom of Christ. Some Christians even sold themselves into slavery so that they could give the proceeds to the poor.

Slowly, though, as time passed and the establishment of the Kingdom was delayed, Christians began to settle in for the long haul. The church was growing large enough that physical organization (as opposed to organization orchestrated simply by the Spirit) became necessary. False teaching and heresy began to be a problem late in the second century. And so, a subtle shift began to take place. Dependence on the Spirit was gradually displaced by direction from powerful overseers (known, by then, as bishops.) The church began to incorporate Greek philosophical views (became Hellenized); apologetics as a systematic defense of Christian theological beliefs emerged. The  New Testament began to take its current form during the mid-second century, out of a need to consolidate an agreed-upon canon, as distinct from a large number of what are now viewed as extra-biblical sources. For all intents and purposes, the expectation of the future Kingdom of God became extinct. Albert Schweitzer, in uncharacteristic understatement, draws a line from the church of the primitive Christians to the church of our day: “The belief in the Kingdom of God which lies at the heart of the Gospel of Jesus, and gives its warmth and glow to the religious life of Primitive Christianity, seems destined in the Christianity of to-day to become, if possible, even weaker than it has been for centuries.” Belief in the coming Kingdom did not just give primitive Christians warmth and a glow. It motivated what can be considered nothing other than heroic living and the ability to stare death in the face with courage, as Polycarp so ably demonstrated. Regardless, Schweitzer’s observation is correct: the coming Kingdom does not drive Christians like it did in the first century. Modern Christianity certain holds to other-worldly beliefs in heaven and hell, but the self-gratifying nature of our belief system focuses on the here and now, rather than on a majestic Kingdom that, any second now, will replace everything we see. The greatest difficulty before us lies in distinguishing between “the coming Kingdom of God” as little more than traditional phraseology, and its incorporation in to our lives in a way that prioritizes and drives everything about us.

It is clear from a reading of the history of primitive Christianity that we cannot go back. The social and political milieu of those times were so different that a reversion is not possible. Further, we have a New Testament. They did not. Their numbers were small. Ours are not. Managing a small cohort required little organization. Managing millions requires something more. Beginning with Augustine, thousands of theologians have worked and reworked the original teachings of the apostles and prophets, creating a coherent body of theological teaching, rendering rather less useful the Spirit-informed and Spirit-driven prophets and teachers of old who tirelessly and spontaneously taught Christians without benefit of the Word of God that we now know as the New Testament. It goes without saying that these Spirit-appointed teachers built the foundation of Christianity with no seminary training!

One can hardly fault the early ecclesiastical church for adapting in the way that it did. But, if we fast-forward to our day, a study of primitive Christianity brings into stark contrast some troubling features of modern life. Idols in the days of the first century were made of wood, stone, and flesh. The Romans accused the early Christians of being atheists because it was not apparent that they worshiped a god, at all. The Romans could point to their god; the Christians could not. It is a frustrating development that the idols of our day are as invisible as the Christian God, tempting everyone to place all gods on the same plane, or on no plane, at all. Anyone with religious hunger, seeking to worship a god, can choose from many invisible gods, including that of the Christians. In a curious twist, like the Romans who interpreted an invisible God as a non-existent God, many of us Christians treat the idols around us as non-existent gods because they are invisible.

Early Christians saw a direct link between many aspects of their society and the activity of demons. We moderns not only cannot see the idols in our society, we do not associate demons with them. Therefore, we are unpracticed at the skill of driving out demons so that the Lord of Hosts can come in to redeem that sector of our lives. Worse than being unskilled, we may not even believe that demons have anything to do with the idols of our day.

Unlike the early Christians, seen as misfits worthy of being fed to wild beasts, the modern church is at home in the world. Certainly, the church takes issue with specific features of society, but the church does not have the same sense about the world that the early Christians did, who saw the coming Kingdom of God as poised to powerfully destroy and utterly replace all of the current power structures. Life in the West these days is good enough for most of the population that we are inclined to subscribe to the opposite view, that the coming Kingdom will introduce an improvement incremental enough that we are not willing to give our lives for it. Indeed, rather than standing against the world order, the church of our day has assimilated much of the world order. The contrary interpretation is also tenable: that the church has been successful in bringing the world order under the dominion of Christ, at least partly, vastly improving life for millions. Regardless of how one interprets history, life in the church is hardly distinguishable from life outside the church. The most pessimistic conclusion is that the Kingdom of God is passé for a large segment of the population in the West, Christian or otherwise.

Yet another problem arose as the church developed after the era of the primitive Christians. For the early Christians, identifying who was and who was not a Christian was easy. “Show me your faith by your works! Free your slaves. Sell your property. Give to the poor. Commune with your brothers and sisters. Gladly give your life.” Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus, Paul told Timothy. With the establishment of the institutional church, Christianity became more acceptable to Roman society. (Henceforth, more people would be martyred by the church than by the state.) As a result, a new problem emerged: it was possible to associate (a.k.a., join) with a church, but not be Christian. Kierkegaard, writing in the 1800s, wrote extensively about this problem, showing its persistence for over a thousand years. He explains: “That one can know what Christianity is without being a Christian is one thing. But whether one can know what it is to be a Christian without being one is something else entirely. And this is the problem of faith. One can find no greater dubiousness than when, by the help of ‘Christianity,’ it is possible to find Christians who have not yet become Christians.”

Catholics are famous for having established hospitals to care for the sick. The early Christians also cared for the sick, but in those days, they preferred not to use herbs and drugs, but prayer and the laying on of hands. Some would even let an illness progress to a critical stage, making the healing power of Christ all the more dramatic. Today, we entrust our health care to physicians and surgeons and drugs. There are no demons. There is no healing power of Christ. Instead, we pray for “wisdom for the doctors.” Christ gets no credit; it is the doctors who receive glory and honor.

In this post, I have barely scraped the surface of an expansive subject: the history of ecclesiology. But, even a superficial survey highlights contrasts that cannot be avoided. Today, anyone who “prays the prayer” or believes that “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” can be Christian. What it took to be a Christian in the first century was hardly trivial: a commitment to the fact of the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God to which access could be had through the saving blood of Christ who guarantees resurrection in the flesh, motivating a life of total sacrifice and martyrdom. Kierkegaard noted the problem: “It would be utterly impossible for the first Christians to recognize Christianity in its current distortion. Yes, they would hear Christianity preached and hear that what was said was entirely true, but to their great horror they would see that the actual conditions for being a Christian are exactly opposite of what they were in their day. To be a Christian now is no more like being a Christian in their day than walking on one’s legs is like walking on one’s head.”

If we cannot go back to those days, then those of us who are serious about our religion and wish, with all sincerity, to distinguish ourselves from those-who-are-Christians-in-name-only, are left with a simple question: What does it mean to be a Christian, today?

I invite you to post an answer to this question in Comments.

References

¹ Eberhard Arnold. The Early Christians, Plough Publishing House, Farmington, PA, 2007. (A translation of Die ersten Christen nach dem Tode der Apostel, Eberhard Arnold, 1926.)

² Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. The Shaping of Things to Come, Hendrickson, Peabody, MA. 2003.

³ Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1998.

‘The stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief corner stone; this came about from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes?”

And they were seeking to seize Him, and yet they feared the people, for they understood that He spoke the parable against them. And so they left Him and went away. (Mark 12:1-12)

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As with most of his parables, Jesus makes one simple point in this story: the vine-growers are the Pharisees, and they are about to destroy the Son, whom the Lord sent. The intent of the story is so clear that “[the Pharisees] understood that He spoke the parable against them.” Even though Jesus uses simple pen-and-ink to sketch this story, the picture that emerges depicts a view of us and our world that is rich with truth and meaning, and for this reason contemplation of this drawing is worth our time.

We would be wise, first of all, to put ourselves in the shoes of the vine-growers, the tenants, whether we consider ourselves Pharisees or not. Otherwise, when we read the gospel, we might just as well skip over this story. God is represented as the landowner, who created the entire vineyard, sparing nothing in the process. He planted the grape vines and constructed a fence around the vineyard. Then, he dug a pit, installed a wine press, and erected a tower. He provided everything the new tenants could possibly need. That the landowner then left  for a distant country is not meant to suggest that God is an absentee landlord over his creation. Indeed,  the Psalmist tells us that God is as near as our souls, even when we are far away (Ps 139:2). Rather, Jesus means to say that, since the landowner was apparently not present, the tenants believed they now had an opportunity.

The tenants got busy doing the work of vine-growers, and they were apparently quite good at their business, enough so that the landowner eventually felt justified to request a share of the profit. But, the tenants were unconcerned with the affairs or interests of the landowner. Over time, they came to act as if the vineyard belonged to them. They knew that this was not true, in fact. If they killed the Son, only then would the vineyard be theirs, or so they thought. Meanwhile, they went on pretending that the vines and the wine-press and the pit all belonged to them and that they had no need for the landowner. Indeed, the vineyard seemed to operate just fine without him. Maintaining the charade required the elimination of all communication from the landowner, which came most visibly in the form of his servants (the prophets). The landowner simply did not matter to the tenants; he was superfluous once the vineyard had been created.

There are only two ways of responding to Jesus’ story: rebel or repent. In this light, we must carefully consider how the Pharisees responded to Jesus’ story. One would hope that they would have seen themselves in the tenants, first feeling shame and then repenting, seeking from Jesus the help that they would need to amend their ways. Sadly, the Pharisees saw the story as an attack on their lifestyle, practice of religion, and values and they became very angry, even to the point of wishing harm on Christ. They could not identify with the tenants or feel any sorrow whatsoever for the disparity between life as it is and life as it should be. They rebelled.

But God, always gracious, is calling us, through this story, to repent. We need to see ourselves in the tenants, and we must experience the sorrow and shame that the Pharisees could not. We must beware that, in considering this story, we are highly vulnerable to an insidious form of rebellion: self-congratulation, a sense of self-satisfaction that gives rise to the exclamation, “God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like [these Pharisees].” Just as importantly, we cannot excuse ourselves with a red herring, saying, “Well, I have never treated God’s prophets or His Son the way the tenants did.” Treating His prophets well is not the point. The landowner is the point! It is absolutely imperative that we see ourselves as one of the tenants.

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And, how much like the tenants am I. God seems distant from the everyday affairs of my life. Where is He when I brush my teeth, or read my email at work, or say “Hello” to a colleague or walk up the stairs or attend a meeting? Oh, yes!, I know He is everywhere, all the time, for He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist. Therefore, the observation that God is distant is not a commentary on His location, but on His relevance.

To feel my angst about this, answer the following questions: Where was God in your day today? Give specifics. Don’t spew theory at me. Was God at work in your day, in your activities? What was He doing? If you can think of anything, were you aware at the time of what He was doing? Was God keenly interested in what you did today? Or is your work so unremarkable from a Kingdom perspective, or of such a calling that you can hardly imagine that God would be interested, except for possible instances of prayer or witnessing? If your answer(s) affirm God’s involvement in your work today in specific ways, when was the last time that your heart rejoiced exceedingly, thanking and praising God in prayer for what He is accomplishing through your work?

If these questions make you squirm, then “Houston, we have a problem,” because you are acknowledging that your day-to-day relationship/interaction with God, as you live it out in its mundane details, is on the same level as that of the tenants and the landowner in Jesus’ story. Your theology might make one claim, that God is everywhere and in everything, but your behavior makes an entirely different claim, that you blissfully go about your daily business thinking that “all this belongs to me!” It is time to “rethink your life in light of the fact that the kingdom of the heavens is open to all.” If we neglect this supremely important task, then, the landowner, according to Jesus, will give the vineyard to others.

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For starters, I need to have a more realistic attitude toward everything in my world, all of which comes from God’s hands… everything: my toothbrush, my hair, my breakfast, the floor on which I walk, the ground, the air, the doorknob, my height, my skin color, my runny nose, the insurmountable problems at work. All of these, and more, should be viewed as God’s blessings in my life, blessings that He has specifically put in place for me, with forethought and love. The Psalmist wrote, “May He come down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth,” and so we often think of God’s blessings as a shower. Upon reflection, though, it is evident that God’s blessings do not come down upon me as a gentle rain, but as a tsunami, absolutely and totally inundating every nook and cranny of my life, penetrating everywhere and everything. It is little wonder that the apostle Paul told us to “pray without ceasing,” for how else are we to get through the list of blessings for which we must thank God?

Secondly, I must realize that things on this earth are for my use, not for my possession. God gave the vineyard to the tenants  for their use, and He naturally expected that they would share the fruits of the vineyard with him. Likewise, everything in my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly, comes from God; He has given me everything I need. Nothing is lacking. But, it’s not about the “stuff.” It wasn’t about the vineyard. It was about the landowner, for “the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.” (St. Ignatius of Loyola)

Many Christians, particularly those not involved in “full-time Christian ministry” wonder about the significance of their work. They believe, in their heart of hearts, that they have a second-rate job, one hardly worthy of the Kingdom. Books are written on the subject of how to find meaning in our jobs. A few years ago, Nav Press published a book by Jerry and Mary White titled, “Your Job – survival or satisfaction?” Your local Christian bookstore can supplement this title with many others. Modern Christians simply do not know why they are doing what they are doing. This feeling about work arises because we do not see God in the vineyard, in our daily lives and work. We believe, intellectually, that He is there, but He is not there in a way that makes any real difference. The parable of the vine-growers is a crucial story and the Holy Spirit knew this when He insisted that it appear in our canon. The story has very practical implications, for it tells me that:

• It is not my vineyard, it it God’s.
• It is not my job, it is the work that God has given me to do.
• It is not my house, but the house that God has given me for my health and protection.
• It is not my car, but the means of transportation that God has given to me.

It’s not that our jobs, or our lives, have no meaning or make no sense. It’s that our jobs and our lives have no intrinsic meaning, apart from God. Not only must we “feel the love,” we must experience the tsunami of His blessings and see His presence everywhere and in everything. Then we can engage in our work with vigor, because it matters to God so much that He has commissioned a tsunami of blessings to enter like a storm into each of our lives.

And He said, “A man had two sons.” (Luke 15:11)

In Luke 15, Jesus tells two stories about repentance. In one, a man leaves his flock of ninety-nine sheep to go find the one that is lost.  In the other story, a woman searches her whole house to find one of ten coins. When the lost sheep and coin are found, there is great rejoicing. Jesus provided commentary, saying, “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Then, he tells the familiar story of the prodigal son. “A man had two sons,” Jesus began. That most of the story focuses on the younger son makes it appear that the repentance of the wayward son is the only point of the story. Indeed, at the end, the father rejoices that he has finally found his son. If that were the only point of the story, then there would be no need to tell it, since Jesus had already told, not one, but two stories that demonstrate the extraordinary value of repentance.

The man went out searching for one sheep. The woman tore her house apart looking for one coin. But Jesus began the story of the prodigal son with, “A man had two sons.” We know all about the younger son. He is famous for his ingratitude and debauchery and disobedience. It is obvious to everyone, from the start, that this son needed saving, in all senses of the word. But Jesus put a second son into the story, whose need was not quite so obvious. The older son became part of the story as a result of the great compassion that Christ had for some of his listeners:

Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near Him to listen to Him. Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 11:1-2)

There were two sons. There were two groups of people that warm evening in Palestine. When Jesus told about the younger son, the tax gatherers and sinners thought, “Yup, that’s me.” And what good news! God offers salvation through repentance, and there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents! The Pharisees, on the other hand, had never had any personal experience with the lifestyle of the younger son. They would never waste God’s money. They had never “lived loosely” or been with a prostitute. And they had never, ever, God forbid!, eaten pig’s food. For the sake of the Pharisees, Jesus inserted the older son into the story, a person with whom they could identify.

Tim Keller wrote a whole book about the prodigal son, and almost certainly, his was not the first and it will not be the last. However, tens of thousands of words are not required to understand this story, otherwise, what hope would there have been for enlightenment in Palestine on the night that Jesus sat around telling stories?

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When the older son came in from working in the field he heard all the commotion, the music and dancing and celebrating. After discovering that the party was being thrown for his rotten, little brother, he got angry and said to his father, ‘Look! For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends. The older son’s relationship with the father, if you can call it that, was based on obedience, or legalism. But, that is not what the father wanted from his son: Son, you have always been with me, and all that is mine is yours. The older son did not see it this way. He thought his responsibility to the father comprised being a “good son,” obeying his father in all things, which he apparently did quite successfully. The relationships in his life were reserved for his friends. As the story unfolds, we see the younger son being brought to his knees, whereupon he found it necessary, if not easy, to repent. However, the story ends without resolution for the older son.

The older son, unlike his younger brother, could not grasp the need for, or the value of repentance. And this is why Jesus includes the older son in the story. The tax gatherers and sinners would immediately see themselves in the younger son, and appreciate the need for repentance and the impact it would have in heaven. The Pharisees would be disgusted with the younger son’s life, just as they were disgusted with the tax gatherers and sinners listening to Jesus. Of the two groups in Jesus’ audience that night, the tax gatherers and sinners were, by far, the easiest to reach with an offer of salvation. The Pharisees, however, were not inclined to think that they were in need of repentance. They believed in God, and were fine upstanding individuals, defenders of the pure faith, fastidious in following the Law. They attended synagogue every week, said grace at every meal, had daily devotions, gave sacrificially at the temple, and studied and memorized the Scriptures. They were the older son.

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Repentance was the theme of all the stories Jesus told that night. He began the story of the prodigal son with, “A man had two sons,” because two sons needed to repent. Most of us who have been around the church for a long time are more like the older son than the younger one. We do not live lives of debauchery, but live upright lives, living as best we know how as laid out in the Word of God. We are the older son. And like the older son, we find it very, very difficult to feel a need to repent because our lives are already religious. What more could God want?! Everyone can easily see of what the younger son should repent. But, pray tell, of what does the older son need to repent?

And isn’t that the $64,000 question? Of what do religious people, especially devout and serious religious people, need to repent?