Tag: Following Jesus

Keeping Christianity Difficult with Sǿren Kierkegaard

I plan on periodically sharing excerpts from the writings of Sǿren Kierkegaard, one of my favorite Christian authors.  Whether or not you agree with him, he is always worth reading (very slowly) and pondering (usually, for a long time).

Here is our Kierkegaard reading for today:

“Hardship is the road [for the Christian life].  Far be from us this hypocritical talk that life is so varied that some are walking along the same road without hardships, others in hardships…Doubt about the task [of discipleship] always has its stronghold in the idea that there could be other roads…but since hardship is the road, the hardship cannot be removed without removing the road, and there cannot be other roads, but only wrong roads.”

In other words, living for Jesus by definition brings difficulty and suffering.  If following Jesus has never made my life more complicated, more difficult, then I am probably not really following Jesus.  I am simply taking a walk.

The Danish Christian thinker, Sǿren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), has been an important spiritual friend of mine for many years.  His writings have provided me with comfort, encouragement, challenge and insight, always mixed with spiritual and intellectual stimulation.

I have even written a book – Encountering Jesus, Encountering Scripture – explaining how Kierkegaard’s “way of knowing” through personal experience is, in fact, the New Testament’s own account of acquiring faith through spiritual experience.

Engaging Kierkegaard has helped me to persevere in following my Lord. Though, as the famous Dane repeatedly confessed, I continue in the process of following Jesus, dependent entirely on his grace.  I still have a long way to go in being conformed to the image of our Savior.

Kierkegaard often went so far as to say that he was in the process of becoming a Christian.  He had not yet arrived.  And, no. He did NOT say this because he believed in earning his way into God’s kingdom by relying on works righteousness.

Kierkegaard talked this way because 19th century Denmark was a nation in the throes of “Christendom.”  That is, the vast majority of its citizens attended the Lutheran state church, and almost everyone considered themselves to be Christian simply because they were Danish.  Denmark was, after all, a “Christian nation.”

Sound familiar?

Following his conversion out of Christendom and into genuine repentance and trust in Jesus Christ, Kierkegaard became a resident missionary to his own people.  He well understood that the Jesus we encounter in the New Testament is highly offensive to anyone who takes him seriously.  After all, Jesus makes the most outrageous demands of his followers.

When the gospel of Jesus Christ is explained truthfully, it is highly offensive and inconvenient.  Jesus repells as well he as attracts.  He offers the average listener many more reasons to say, No, than to say, Yes.

So, as a missionary to Christian Denmark, Kierkegaard became convinced that he must make Christianity difficult.  For only by hearing the highly offensive challenge embedded in the Lordship of Jesus Christ does anyone hear the truth of the gospel.

Making Christianity “difficult,” then, was simply a matter of talking about Jesus faithfully. Something that was in short supply in 19th century Denmark, especially among pastors and theologians working for the state church.

But, if we stop to think about it, Kierkegaard’s Denmark was not all that different from America today.

Even though the United States has never embraced an established, state church, far too many Americans are blinded by a similar idolatry – belief in a Christian nation where patriotism eclipses allegiance to the resurrected Jesus.

Yes. Our country desperately needs to hear a much more difficult brand of Christianity.

The Resurrected Jesus at Work!

I am extremely blessed to be part of a local church that believes one of its major responsibilities is to love the surrounding community.  And the most significant way to love other people is to introduce them to the resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ.

More than 120 people were baptized at the various Easter services our church conducted this past weekend!

Jesus is alive.  He continues to forgive sin, bring us into the waiting arms of our heavenly Father, make us new people, and lead us into new life in the kingdom of God.

Strengthening the Community of Kingdom Citizens, An Excerpt from My New Book

Here is an excerpt from my new book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st-Century America, pages 190-94. Consult the print edition to follow up on the notes.

Available from: Eerdmans or Barnes&Noble or Amazon

Strengthening the Community of Kingdom Citizens

My brief but significant experience of spontaneous community that hot Chicago night offers a good corollary to the central role that should be filled by the Christian church in the implementation of Jesus’s kingdom ethics in this world. As the community of flesh-and-blood citizens inhabiting God’s kingdom, the church is called to be the birthplace and the supportive family that assists faithful disciples in both the blessings and the risks awaiting anyone daring enough to obey Jesus’s upside-down model of loving God.

In fulfilling this mission, God’s kingdom community will be characterized by a number of essential features, none of which are electives from which we may pick and choose as we like. Rather, they are each defining traits that identify the church as church, as opposed to its being a curious religious/ social club. First, every kingdom community will be awash in biblical teaching that explains how Christ not only died for us but also how he lived for us in order to exemplify the way of salvation. A community of the redeemed will worship and adore the Lord Jesus for his gracious sacrifice, and it will exemplify his teaching and ministry throughout the regular affairs of daily life.

Consequently, the material contained in this book should not be unfamiliar to members of the body of Christ. On the contrary, all of these lessons should be old hat for anyone who regularly attends a Christian church, as familiar as a child’s nursery rhyme to even the youngest novice disciple. Wherever Jesus’s teaching is new or unfamiliar, remedial measures need to be vigorously implemented by church leaders, for the community obviously has not fulfilled its responsibilities. Anyone inclined to reject Jesus’s gospel lessons as objectionable or unrealistic requires mentoring by more mature disciples who can explain the importance of following Jesus faithfully from their own personal experience. As both Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard insisted, in this world the true church is always the church militant, never the church triumphant.

Whenever the church becomes a byword for prosperity, comfort, and success, or offers nothing more than a blasé ceremonial blessing draped over a safe, middle-class life proceeding without inconvenience or interruption, then the church has ceased to be the church. Those who refuse to embrace the difficulties of authentic discipleship need a good talking to, an occasion on which they are told, gently but firmly, that their behavior belies their confession. Jesus warned the boastful disciples who were seeking recognition for their gifts of prophecy and miracles:

Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?” Then I will tell them plainly, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.” (Matt. 7:21–23)

We dare not forget that the Father’s will, previously described by Jesus in Matthew 5–7, never says anything about working miracles, exorcisms, or delivering prophecies. Rather, true disciples reveal themselves as those who are poor in spirit (5:3), meek and merciful (5:4–7), behave as peacemakers (5:9), are persecuted for the sake of Jesus and his gospel (5:10–12), never carry grudges (5:21–26), always speak the truth and keep their word (5:33–37), love, serve, and pray for their enemies (5:28–48), share generously with anyone in need without ever demanding repayment (6:1–4), forgive all those who sin against them (6:14–15), and make faithful kingdom citizenship the number-one priority of life (6:33).

No one can follow the Lord Jesus by moving exclusively along broad, smooth, level, six-lane highways festooned with convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, and health spas. Jesus warns us in advance that he rarely travels those routes. His preferred pathways are dusty, narrow, steep, rocky, inconvenient, lacking in amenities, and often dangerous. No one can complain that they weren’t warned. Jesus commands us to “enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt. 7:13–14).

Serving among such faithful Christian communities entails the cultivation of a normative Christian self-understanding throughout the entire body of Christ that focuses on the ultimacy of life in the kingdom of God. The focal point of a disciple’s identity is life in Christ, not nationality, gender, sexual orientation, career, hobbies, levels of personal consumption, leisure-time pursuits or political activities. This self-understanding will express itself as community members (a) consistently think, believe, and behave according to the upside-down values of God’s kingdom; (b) remember that this world is not the believer’s true home, that we are only pilgrims here, strangers passing through a fallen world on our way to a perfected, eternal home; (c) learn not to value what the rest of this world values so that we remain free of its deceptive power—for us “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21); (d) remember that we are always sinners saved by grace, even as we are being sanctified through experience. This means that following Jesus—at some level, in some way—will commonly run contrary to our natural inclinations. When my faith in Jesus never makes me the oddball in the board room, then I know that I have lost my way somewhere along the line.

Human nature, being what it is, will frenetically poke and prod each of us, looking for a way to turn this advice into the framework for a new game of spiritual one-upmanship. But kingdom communities will consciously foster an environment that rejects legalism and works-righteousness while making grace-filled obedience to a forgiving Savior central. We will bear each other’s burdens, rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn (Rom. 12:15), not guffawing at those who bungle or turning green with envy at those who succeed. Richard Burridge makes an important observation in his book Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics, when he notes that, whereas Jesus’s ethical instruction is always rigorous and demanding, his actual treatment of repentant sinners, including his doubtful disciples who often fail him, is always gracious and forgiving.2 Anyone who genuinely wants to follow Jesus can always have another chance—another chance to do the hard things he tells us to do. Jesus is like the patient parent who anxiously anticipates the day when his child will walk all the way to school by herself; but as long as the child remains an infant, he lovingly cheers her on at every feeble act of faith, no matter how imperfect, one faltering step at a time. But he never excuses her from the task of walking.

Moments of fellowship and mutual support in such communities will extend well beyond the typical chitchat about ball games and vacation plans. It will include regular stories of how our friends have taken risks, suffered setbacks, and been shunned by others in their efforts to live for Jesus. The church community will be able to recite the details of miraculous interventions, dramatically transformed lives, amazing answers to prayer, and the refreshing presence of the Holy Spirit—all of which occurred because faithful brothers and sisters were serious about the risky business of following Jesus.

Conversely, there is no reason for God’s kingdom people to expect similar behavior from those living outside of the kingdom or to shun unbelievers for violating the norms of kingdom living. Unfortunately, this is an ancient confusion that many in the church perpetuate today. When the apostle Paul condemned sexual immorality within the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 5:1–5), he urged the community to discipline the guilty parties by banning them from the fellowship until they repented and changed their ways (vv. 2, 5, 11). Discipline was a tool for redemption. The church, however, grabbed the wrong end of the stick and mistakenly assumed that Paul’s admonition “not to associate with sexually immoral people” (v. 9) meant that they should not have any dealings with people outside of the Christian community. This is always the easier—and more self-righteous—decision to make. However, Paul offers a quick correction:

I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral. . . . In that case you would have to leave this world. . . . What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. (1 Cor. 9–13)

The church suffers from a massive delusion when its members think they are justified in refusing to do business with “sinners” outside of the community. Are we to assume that Paul, the tent-maker (Acts 18:3), never sold a tent to local shoppers in the marketplace because they, like everyone else in the ancient world, prayed to their household-ancestor deities before family meals?3 I doubt that very much. Consequently, Christians are not being persecuted when they suffer the legal consequences of such self-righteous discrimination against those unlike themselves. Whatever the penalties may be for this misguided misbehavior, none of it has anything to do with following Jesus of Nazareth, the man who feasted with sinners, tax-collectors, and prostitutes.

Finally, a community of kingdom citizens will work to break down the traditional, destructive liberal/conservative political dichotomies by doing evangelism an proclaiming historically orthodox theology while simultaneously encouraging widespread counter-cultural kingdom living and social activism among its members. The modern American evangelical church’s unhelpful identification of historic orthodox theology with conservative Republican politics, while it identifies and links liberal, unorthodox theology with progressive Democratic politics, has always been a poisonous misrepresentation that is damaging to both ends of the political spectrum. The kingdom of God can never be identified by way of anyone’s political Rorschach test, as though we can project a new tax policy or foreign affairs initiative on the screen and then discover God’s will in the fine details.4 Real disciples simply will not fit into anyone’s partisan mold because Jesus’s kingdom mindset is not of this world. I once told a colleague that he had given me one of the nicest compliments of my life when he said in exasperation that he could never predict where I would come down on a controversial social issue. I smiled and said, “Thank you. I hope that is because I am trying to think biblically, not politically.”

I am still trying.

The church must continually plug its ears to the numerous strategies that are offered for manipulating earthly power for kingdom purposes by grabbing the reins of government. The lie of that power is as old as the devil himself. Those who would co-opt the kingdom of God for their own partisan agendas need to listen again to Jesus’s rebuke when that very temptation was first offered to him in the wilderness: “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only’” (Matt. 4:10).

Admittedly, equally sincere disciples will not always agree on where the lines of kingdom faithfulness should be drawn. One of the intractable debates that divided the German Confessing Church in the days of the Third Reich was a stubborn disagreement over when resistance against the state was genuinely theological and confessional (and therefore justified) versus when resistance was merely political and not truly a result of faithfulness to the gospel (and therefore unjustified).5 As a result, the Confessing Church never extended its critique of the Nazi government beyond its interference in church affairs; and it never criticized Nazi foreign or domestic policy. For example, Confessing Church leaders such as Pastor Martin Niemöller never opposed the Nazi anti-Semitism laws because the enactment of those laws did not interfere with normal church life.6 After the war Niemöller confessed that his own anti-Semitism had blinded him to the demonic nature of the Nazi discrimination laws. Today it would be well worth the time for church members to prayerfully discuss—with Bible in hand and an unwavering focus on the personal character cultivated by kingdom citizenship—what the gospel’s implications are for a Christian’s response to the laws, policies, and actions of our own government. In how many ways has American Christianity been blinded to the right-minded implementation of God’s upside-down kingdom values because of our own cultural conditioning?7