In Class with Jesus - Part 1
We have largely been inoculated against the changes that discipleship accomplishes because we have personalised our faith, to the exclusion of others. We have made personal happiness the outcome of our faith, the goal of our existence. We want God to be nice and to agree with us, but alas He is good and hardly ever does.
The American Constitution speaks of happiness as an inalienable right, but it was cast in vastly different circumstances, and for very different reasons than it is used today. A virtue has warped into a vice. Some Greek philosophers believed happiness the goal of living and the right of some, those some being Greek, upper-class men.
Whatever disturbs our happiness disturbs our existence, and it results in us being no different than the world around us – dissatisfied, offendable and morbidly self-oriented.
How quickly we forget that Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:34-38)
Most growth and change are in the context of and as a result of the saving community of Christ’s body – the church. Nobody can live in redemptive isolation. But community demands something of us. It requires accountability and forgoing the right to retain unhelpful attitudes and harming lifestyles – something the particularised man holds on to like a drowning sailor to a life buoy, sharks circling.
“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for him. But the people did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. And when his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them. But he turned and rebuked them.’ And they went on to another village.” (Luke 9:51-56). Some versions add, “You do not know what kind of spirit you are of.”
They had no idea what motivated them – most of us don’t either. We are a strange and often toxic mixture of our environments, our decisions, our proclivities, our sins.
What is it that shifts attitudes ingrained in us? Exposure, awakening, repentance, and rebuke. Jesus did all of this and more, and usually in public. We have lawyers to mitigate against this possibility today. Woe to anyone that calls us out, challenges us, or, heaven forbid, rebukes us. But we are infinitely the poorer for it.
Most enduring change comes in the context of life (not class) and via the context of community. We would rather change happened in prayer closets, unseen. Why? We don’t cope with exposure and embarrassment – they are manifestly uncomfortable.