in it for ourselves...

Last week I was attempting to articulate that while this message of Jesus is indeed personal it is not so primarily and thus secondarily global. With that I proposed that instead of starting people out on a “personal” track that at some point we hope matures into a more missional faith, we should perhaps be starting them out on a track that is immediately personal with a missional mindset. This idea of rejecting an initially and solely personal approach is by no means a “yeah, yeah I know all that Jesus and the cross stuff, let’s get on with feeding the poor” attitude toward the work of Jesus, the redemption he provides and the hope it leaves us. It is more so an acknowledgement of the fact that “God so loved the world…”

Maybe I am beating around the bush so let me get right to the point. This thought that I have been wrestling with and possibly failing to articulate clearly, stems from the conviction that so many of us Christians are seemingly in it for ourselves. That’s right and maybe it shouldn’t be so.

Jesus’ very existence among us was selfless in itself and this selflessness brought world-wide redemption and ushered in religious, political, economic and artistic global shifts. Yet, in some ways now, he is a Jesus for me. We sing him songs, talk about him with fondness in groups, and ask him to do some stuff for us in prayers. Our “quiet times” are for us. Our spirituality is for us. Our Sunday mornings are for us. Sometimes even our service projects are for us. I often ask myself to what end are these Christian things aimed at. The answer is me getting to heaven. Our framing story has been about a “personal salvation” moving into “personal spirituality” through various Christian tips and disciplines leading to “personal success” in this life and ultimately with a reward in the life to come. What if this message/way of Jesus was not about a bunch of individuals from Earth making it to Heaven, but was more so about Heaven coming to Earth?

While so many of us in our various groups on Sunday morning bask in the warmth of “church” and soak up the Son, I often think about those who don’t connect with us anymore. Particularly our children. I know so many 18-30 year olds who are leaving, left or fake it well enough to keep mom and dad satisfied. What about them? Does the fact that our own children struggle to find relevance in us at least grab our attention? Do we take any of the blame or do we pass that on to the world or Satan essentially washing our hands of the fact that they struggle to believe in our religion yet they long for our God. Unfortunately, so often they don’t know where to look anymore.

I guess that is what perpetuates my antagonistic tone in so many posts. I long in some way to awaken us and whispering sweet nothings is giving way to increasingly loud crashes as my level of alarm increases the more I think of the sentence I just wrote. They struggle to believe in our religion yet they long for our God.

So often “religion” is about us. It is about my spiritual practices, my beliefs, my traditions, and my salvation. While selfishness still rears its’ ugly head and too often looks like a self portrait, my self-centered religion has been dying over the last 5 years. I will celebrate the day it takes its’ last breath. I long not to make God relevant to the growing number of the jaded but instead to clean the glass from the smudges of self-centered religion in hopes that the jaded can actually get a good look at Him.