Untamed Christianity

Our faith defies the status quo.

Our Savior calls for a complete revolution of the human heart. 

Our Gospel is designed to ignite a total regime change within the soul of every living person.

Our Messiah was executed for defying the Empire - both the Church and the State.

He encouraged his followers to lay down their lives and die for Him - not as suicidal martyrs, but as radical agents of love who would rather die than resort to hatred or violence.

The majority of our Scriptures were written by a former terrorist who helped to imprison and murder numerous disciples of Christ.

He was radically transformed by a supernatural encounter with our Jesus and that day became an ambassador of the Prince of Peace.

After that day he left his violence behind and instead embraced the way of the cross, seeking not to destroy his enemies, but to love them and to share in the sufferings of Christ as he boasted all the more in his own weakness.

Many of those early disciples and saints were led like lambs to the slaughter, much like our Lord. By the hundreds they submitted to the governing authorities and were burned, boiled and skinned alive, beheaded, and even crucified upside down, never once reaching out to do violence to their oppressors, but declaring their love for Jesus and even praying for those who put them to death.

These subversive missionaries of light understood that their struggle was not against flesh and blood. They knew that the weapons of their warfare were not of this world, but spiritual, and far more powerful - able to transform hearts and minds alike.

They knew that they were sent as lambs and doves, not wolves and serpents, into a world dominated by power and lust. Yet they refused to participate in the things that make for war or death. 

Instead, they devoted themselves to the way of life, and light, and peace, and mercy, and most of all to love.

Oh, blood was shed, to be sure. But the blood that was shed was their own. 

What happened to those Christians? Where did those sorts of believers in the message of Christ go?

Why, today, is it so rare to find anyone who claims the name "Christian" and still embraces the Gospel of Christ?

Instead of resisting the Empire, many Christians today embrace it, salute it, pledge their allegiance to it, and even kill others to protect the honor of their Empire.

Instead of seeing everyone alive as someone Christ loved dearly enough to die for, many of them openly express their hate for people of other faiths, and make no attempt to veil their contempt for those who oppose them, or their Nation, or even their Political ideology.

Instead of laying down their lives and their rights so that those who are without Christ might see a living example of His radical love, many who claim to follow Jesus attempt to cut people off from God's grace simply because they are "sinners"; forgetting that Jesus was a friend of sinners and spent most of his time among them in fellowship.

Many Christians today are deeply and profoundly offended by the idea that Jesus loves terrorists, and homosexuals, and communists, and transgender people, and those who simply think differently than they do about God, or Politics, or Theology.

If those early Christians were like the people who wear His Name today, they would have tortured or killed someone like Saul of Tarsus before he ever had an opportunity to be changed, or to write most of our New Testament.

I'm so glad they weren't like us. I just wish that we were more like them.

The truth is, we cannot say we love God if we do not love others. 

That means, I love God as much as I love the poor.

I love God as much as I love the homosexual.

I love God as much as I love my enemy.

What if, at the final judgment, Jesus identified you as a sheep or a goat based on how well you had loved your enemy?

Is there any reason to think that He won't? He warns us that on that day He will divide us by groups into those who showed mercy and love to the outcast, and those who did not.

Jesus also said that not everyone who called him "Lord", would enter His Kingdom. Only those who do what He said to do. 

Loving our enemies is one of the clearest and most unmistakable commands Jesus gave us.

"Why do you call me ‘Lord, lord’ and do not do what I say?"

Are we so sure that our attitudes about others are justified? Are we certain that Jesus won't expect us to have embraced His call to love others as He has loved us?

The Gospel of the Kingdom is simply about submission to Christ as Lord. If He is truly Lord, then we can love as He commanded and not worry about the outcomes. 

It's time we untamed our Christianity. 

Let us return to a wild, unbridled pursuit of the radical Messiah who challenged us to live outside our comfort zones.

Let us defy the status quo and begin to love with more audacity and abandonment than anyone would consider feasible.

Let us resolve to hate no one - to condemn no one - to shame no one.

Let us take up our crosses, set our eyes on the One who would rather die than live without us, and follow in His footsteps towards a Kingdom that is already in the making.

"Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!” (Rev. 11:15) 

Sacrilegious Jesus

Sacrilegious; Adj. - “Gross irreverence toward a hallowed person, place, or thing.”

It occurs to me that Jesus, the Messiah, was profoundly sacrilegious. He healed on the Sabbath, picked grain on the Sabbath, and defied the Jewish High Priest and the ruling religious class on an almost daily basis.

This is part of what confounded the Jewish leaders of his day. They were looking for a Messiah who would fit into their program, a star quarterback they could draft who would take their team to the Super Bowl.

Instead, what they got was an outlaw who wore his own uniform, played by his own rules and had the audacity to expect them to join his team. Of course, they were scandalized by this sort of take charge Messiah. They couldn’t accept that the Chosen One might kick things off by correcting them publicly, pointing out their flaws, their pride and their errors in front of everyone. How could he be so cruel? Why would he expose their inconsistencies that way?

Even worse, this back water Rabbi from Nazareth recruited his disciples from among the peasant class rather than selecting the children of the wealthiest and most intelligent in Jerusalem. Instead of choosing to teach the sons of priests and governors, he selected a revolutionary extremist, a tax collector, some smelly fishermen, and a few random Gallileans of no fame or lineage. This is why his ministry required the support of outsiders like women, and prostitutes, and other tax collectors. It was really shameful, to be honest.

But what really rubbed the Pharisees the wrong way was his constant breaking of the Sabbath. In fact, it almost seemed to be intentional on his part to work miracles on the very day that he should be at home resting. What’s more, when confronted about this he had the audacity to suggest that the reason he was breaking the Sabbath was because God was also at work on the Sabbath. So, if God doesn’t rest on the Sabbath why should he? (John 5:17)

What makes the sacrilegious actions of Jesus so profound is that his irreverence wasn’t towards God, but instead pointed out the hypocrisy of men and the emptiness of tradition and religion itself.

Jesus wanted people to come to himself, not to a temple. He wanted people to spend time with him, not a book of rules. Jesus wanted people to look to him for answers, not to religious leaders.

Jesus didn’t ever play church. He spent most of his time among the poor and the broken, the outcast and the weak. When he did go to the Temple it was to point out the hypocrisy of the religious charlatans and to call people to follow Him and to enter the Kingdom of God in humility.

Sacrilegious people do not care for pretense. They do not care about faux religiousity. They roll their eyes at the pomp and circumstance of religious show and have no patience for a sermon and a song.

Like Jesus, the sacrilegious person is only interested in cutting through the nonsense to get to the heart of the matter. Spare the flowery speeches and the platitudes, just show them what’s real and cut to the chase.

Jesus didn’t come to start a new religion, or to validate an existing one. He came to announce that the Kingdom of God had come and that, through submission to Himself, anyone could live in it right away.

Jesus cuts to the chase by simply saying, “Repent (think differently) because the Kingdom of God is within you.”

Submission to His Kingship in your actual life on a daily basis is all that matters. The rest is just religiosity.

Seems we could use a dose of good old fashioned sacrilege today.

-kg

“You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” – (John 5:39-40)

“Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” – (John 4:23-24)

EMBRACING DISCOMFORT

Lately I've been feeling a very strong urge to step outside of my comfort zone again.

There was a time when I was regularly crossing that border to minister to prostitutes in Santa Ana at 12am, or hosting hot dog picnics with the homeless in Costa Mesa and hoping the cops didn't try to shut us down.

Over the last few years I've slowly settled into the comfort of my daily routine. I've given myself permission to spend my time on myself and as a result I've been less and less engaged in the lives of others around me. Not just the poor, but those in my community, my neighborhood, even my own house church family.

Slowly I've been awakening as if from a long nap and I'm discovering once again a strong desire to pursue Jesus outside of my comfort zone.

Truth be told, this is where you'll find Jesus. He's out there. He's moving among the poor. He's near to the destitute. He's wrapping his arms around the homeless. He's weeping over the prostitute. He's grieving with the hopeless. Just as he was when he walked this Earth over 2,000 years ago, Jesus is always "out there" where the broken and the forgotten are crying out for love.

So, right now I just know that I need to rediscover Jesus in the street and I'm feeling, personally, a need to be challenged more in this area of my life.

Someone reminded me the other day that the word "Compassion" means "to suffer with". If we do not make ourselves available to those who are suffering, we can't truly know what compassion is all about.

I know that I need to start leaving my comfort zone more often to encounter Jesus in the world around me, and specifically among the poor where I live.

My friend Thomas Crisp has been spending his Sunday mornings hanging out with the homeless at a local shelter. Together we've been trying to explore how to create an incarnational expression of Jesus among the poor here in Orange County. Meaning nothing more than he and I sitting down and having a meal with people living on the streets. Not to fix them. Not to evangelize. But to allow the Holy Spirit to change us (and them) in the process of sharing a meal and inviting Jesus to be with us.

It's simple, yet it's bold. It's quiet, but it's radical. It's small, but it's powerful enough to transform a human soul into the image of Jesus. At least, that's what I'm about to find out.

Peace,
kg

John Bunyan: Radical Heretic

In 1658, Bunyan was arrested and indicted for preaching without a license. He continued to preach, in spite of this, and avoided being imprisoned until November of 1660.

In that same year, The Restoration of the Monarchy by Charles II turned up the heat on John Bunyan's unlicensed preaching of the Gospel as the country returned to Anglicanism. As a result, unlicensed (non-Anglican) houses of worship were closed and all citizens were required to attend their Anglican parish church.

Under this rule of law, it became illegal for Christians in England to "conduct divine service except in accordance with the ritual of the church, or for one not in Episcopal orders to address a congregation."

Because John Bunyan no longer had the freedom to preach that he had enjoyed under the Puritan Commonwealth, and because he refused to stop preaching the Gospel, he was arrested on November 12, 1660 while preaching privately.

He was confined for three months, but, because he refused to conform and expressed his intention to preach the Gospel in opposition to this law, his confinement was extended for a period of nearly 12 years, during which time he wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress” his most famous work.

Bunyan was incarcerated for his faith because he refused to accept the lie that only special clergymen have authority to preach the Gospel saying, "If you release me today, I will preach tomorrow."