Perception Is Key (December 2012)

The Problem
Watch this brief "street-interview" style video to see what some are saying about God and Jesus:




There are a couple problems with this video. One, people have these views of God/Jesus (nothing new) that are largely based on personal study, personal experience, or personal opinion. The obvious issue is how we, as believers, can deal with entire lifetimes of such barriers to belief. Two, people can continue on in such beliefs if their time spent with believers are largely confirmations of their doubts and hurts.

The video shares three or four verses that - in and of themselves - offer very little in the way of being confronted with the living God. In other words, it's either not evangelistic in aim or does a poor job in the execution. But I don't think that was the purpose of the video in the first place. I think this video is for believers.

We are being called to recognize the reality of people of various minds, talents, and life situations who are still in desperate need of Jesus! And what others perceive in us is - fairly or unfairly - attributed to God as well. The problem is that God judges and loves completely at all times, while our judgments can seem remarkably devoid of the love we were told to be known by.

The Work 
God has given us the work of lovingly bringing the truth of salvation through Jesus (which is different from 'saving people' as though it's us doing anything) to a hurting and desperately broken world. Where God's people do not act, Satan laughs and celebrates the ease of his own work. All he has to do, then, is let them live life their own way, in the way that seems most natural to them, and his work succeeds. Jesus doesn't describe himself as a shepherd for nothing. Sheep (singular) are not a flock if they are alone. And when they are alone they are vulnerable and prone to go their own direction. How often do we hear the prize of individuality touted as a great trait? Well, for sheep it's an invitation to be a predator's prey.

The truth - God's truth - is that individuality's unforeseen end, for those who walk in it, is closer to amputation. We should be a body, and anybody who loves their own body is seeking to improve it with the help and encouragement of others. This is God's design. For us to be united (one, as God the Son and God the Father and God the Spirit are one) and grow up into the head of our body, even Jesus.

Think about when you first applied for your job. Were you required to learn the in's and out's of the work you were to do before they set you loose to do the work? Were you hired and then you only returned to your place of work on payday? These questions are obviously ridiculous - as they should be - because when we applied for work, we knew we would be required to work. And our knowledge about the work we're paid to do when we were hired is less than what we will possess ten years down the road. If it were less ten years later, we'd be out looking for another job. We can be thankful God does not treat us as any employer would!

How, then, have we so divorced our responsibilities as believers from the gracious gift of salvation?

America's couches, I'm sure, are full of bodies that purchased exercise equipment for their home with great plans to work out. But possessing the cures to laziness are not the same as using them. A chin up bar that stays in the box won't fight a flabby bicep. In the same way, having a Bible in your house (most American homes have an average of three Bibles) does not imbue you with holiness or affect the work of sanctification. And neither does simply going to church once a week, or month, or year.

We are called to pursue maturity, not sit back and hope that maturity happens naturally. Yes, God calls and guides us in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. But we cannot cherry-pick scripture out of context to remove all responsibility from us. Saying that God does not need us to pursue righteousness is at best a hyper-religious (sounding) platitude and at worst an ignoring of the fuller testimony of scripture. Our effort here isn't about earning God's love or approval, but responding to them. We are held accountable for our chosen direction.

Thankfully, our failures in this regard are not the end of us. 

The Solution 
Ultimately, the solution to these problems is not us - our reasoning, our persuasion, our presentation - at all. The solution is the historically missional move of God through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit!

That's the good news!

God's heaven (and, conversely, the sobering population of hell) does not rest with us at all but with the sovereignty of our gracious God. The also-good news is that God most often accomplishes this work through us, His people, who are called by His name and so-named for His glory (not our own).

This good news, this gospel, is not cheap or ineffective in our salvation. If we are truly saved by God, we are in a process of change, of transformation, of regeneration and sanctification.

What I'm getting at is this: sleeping with your head on your Bible is more likely to make the book oily and give you a crick in the neck than it is to make you holy or knowledgeable about God through Christ. We cannot confront the myths about God and about Jesus if we do not know God and Jesus ourselves.

We have a responsibility to learn about the God we claim to follow and the Jesus whose name we wear. Just as we should not act like we can "save" anyone (and we should remove such phrases from our Christian vocabularies, since words spoken eventually steer opinions), we would do well to admit that we have fallen from the bus of spiritual growth. Or walked off.

This is not about 'legalism,' so do not be scared into a corner of apathy or inaction by those who cleverly aim such words at you.

This is not about earning your salvation, which we would all know if we knew our Bibles as much as we could.

This is about signing up for Christianity with wisdom, and knowing what we're getting into.

Use this next year to bathe in God's word and do the work. Become the person God sees in you and designed you to be. You have work to do. Don't be apathetic or lazy with your faith. The way others see God depends on it!