Radical Enough- Part 1

Radical Enough? (part one)

by Daniel Jepsen

Note: You may want to read the Christianity Today article, “Here Come the Radicals!” by Matthew Lee Anderson in conjunction with Dan’s post.

Thanks to Dan for sharing these perspectives with us. Check out his blog at Sliced Soup.

* * *

A dozen or so years ago, I took my youth group to an event called, Acquire the Fire.  For those unfamiliar with ATF, think of it as Promise Keepers on steroids.  14,000 teenagers jammed into Michigan State’s basketball arena for a weekend of music, videos, drama, and, especially, preaching; all of it had one theme: You are not radical enough in your devotion to God.

At the next church service, the teens gave testimonies of what spiritual impact the weekend had.  Andy, one of the student leaders summed up the challenge to the youth group and the church as a whole with this warning: “Listen, if you don’t want to be completely sold out and filled with the Spirit…run!”  It was a shot across the bow, letting everyone know that lukewarm Christianity would no longer be tolerated.

Andy has grown into a fine young father, wise beyond his years, and I am sure he looks back on the episode with a wince and a wink.  For no-one ran, but neither did most change in the long run.  That weekend (and more like it) served to up the ante of what it means to be a Christian, but only a few students actually changed their behavior for more than a month or two.

I thought of that event (and Andy’s bold warning) today as a read an article on the glut of new books aimed at making Christians more radical in their commitment to Christ.  The article is the cover story of the March issue of Christianity Today, and is titled, “Here Come the Radicals”.  Matthew Lee Anderson surveys the books which have come out and offers a rather nuanced critique.  I have broken up my comments into three posts. This one, the first, will basically be a summary and analysis of Anderson’s article. The second and third will deal with my own critique (for what it’s worth) of the new call to radicalism.

Anderson begins by focusing on David Platt, pastor of a mega-church in Alabama, who in both his books and his sermons is renowned for calling Christians to a more radical commitment to Christ. At the heart of Platt’s message is that we often turn the “radical Jesus of the Bible…into the comfortable Jesus of 21^st century American culture. Our luxury and self-focus have blinded us to the lost and the hungry around the world.

The article then lists other men who are writing in a similar vein.  Altogether, the books he engages with are:

• Radical (David Platt)
• Radical Together (David Platt)
• The Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne)
• Not a Fan (Kyle Idleman)
• Crazy Love (Francis Chan)
• Greater (Steven Furtick)

Noting that all of these books have hit the Christian best-seller list (and most are still on them), Anderson writes:

In other words, the radical message has found an eager market.  The books have their theological and pastoral differences, but the thrust of their rhetoric moves in the same direction. They have both incited and tapped into a widespread dissatisfaction with many American’s comfortable, middle-class way of life and the Christianity that so easily fits within it. These pastors may not be saying much new about the Bible or Jesus, but their message says enough about us.

Anderson notes the dominant theme (you’re not really committed to Christ unless…) by highlighting typical phrases:

• We radical abandonment to Jesus
• We need to understand what it means to really follow Jesus
• We need a desire for ‘more God’, even if we are surrounded by people who have ‘enough God’
• we need to have a ‘serious self-inventory’
• we need to have a ‘define the relationship’ talk with Jesus
• we need to put everything in our lives on the table before God
• counting on the sinner’s prayer for salvation is superstitious
• a lot of people who call themselves Christians are dangerously deceived

The common warning is that a stunted belief in Jesus that does not result in radical obedience is either missing the point of the Christian life or is missing salvation itself.  Those who are held up as models of the Christian life are those who made radical life changes to follow Christ, like becoming overseas missionaries, or moving into the inner city. Anderson writes, “It really hard to read these books, one after another, and confidently declare yourself a Christian at the end”.

What to make of this?  Well, before getting to Anderson’s critique (and later my own) let me just honor these pastors for taking up the trumpet and sounding forth the same needed note played by many others in previous centuries.  Every generation needs its own prophets reminding us, in the words of Bonheoffer, that the call to the cross is a call to come and die.  For the seminal period of my own life, A. W. Tozer played this role for me, just as Kierkegaard, Andrew Murray, and countless others did for people in their time.  Perhaps we need this trumpet call more clearly in our culture than even in times past, since the usual cacophony of the world is increasingly joined with the strident songs of the prosperity preachers.  I continue to believe the greatest heresy of the modern American church is the monstrous notion that the gospel is primarily about making us succeed in this world’s terms.

So I take my place on the side of these men.  I count them not only as my brothers, but models of Christian commitment that I can learn much from.

But every emphasis needs both clarity and balance, and Anderson offers an irenic but helpful critique of the new call to radicalism.

First, he points out that the medium is constantly working against the message.  He notes that the message of self-denial and of radical concern for the poor “occurs in massive church buildings in middle-class surroundings, spoken to people who shop at the Gap, on platforms called stages rather than pulpits. In order to inject the message with more meaning and more power we revert to the language of the theater—one of our cultures favorite pastimes.”

In the same vein, he writes:

What’s more, the radical message comes packaged in the Christian-conference-publishing-celebrity-industrial complex… [which] has to think and act with profits in mind.  The really radical path for a mega-church pastor these days would be to refuse to publish, to take a smaller church, to not podcast sermons, and to embrace a more monastic witness.  The irony is that if they tried, we’d probably turn them into larger celebrities and laud their humility.  The desert fathers had a similar problem. But if the message is going to critique the American dream for the people in the pews, then we need pastors willing to show us the path of downward mobility in their lives.

A second corrective Anderson gives relates to the difference between an interior and individualized faith (based mainly on personal intensity) and a public, culture-changing, multi-generational faith-movement.  As he puts it, “The urgent rhetoric of preaching the gospel to the billion unreached and helping the poor right now leaves little space to create the institutions and practices (art, literature, theology, liturgy, festivals, etc.) that can transmit such an inheritance to the next generation, and to form belief in deeper and more permanent ways.”

To use an analogy of my own, while the founding fathers of our country needed a fighting army, they also needed to create, perfect, and sustain institutions, practices and ideas so that the freedom fought for lasted for more than one or two generations.  The radical commitment of the infantry soldier will take a different form than the work of the state representative. In focusing on radical commitment rather than faithfulness , the heroic rather than the mundane, these pastors risk undermining the ways that most people can better serve Christ; they are at risk of divorcing spirituality from the everyday (even as they proclaim a holistic commitment to Christ).

Anderson’s warning, I think, is fair and needed.  It is not that a call to deeper commitment to Christ is bad, of course; rather, that call needs to be interpreted in a way that everyday people can follow over the long haul.

That last sentence brings us to the brink of my own critique of the new radicals (to use CT’s phrase).  But that will be in part 2.

Grace for the Mundane

I have started reading the book, The God of the Mundane by Matt Redmond. In it, Redmond makes the case for God being glorified in our quiet, faithful, ordinary lives. I will be posting some of the blog posts that eventually became the book.

The God of the Mundane: Part 2, Grace for the Mundane

In my last post I was hypothetically questioning the existence of “the God of the Mundane.” In other words, must every thing we do be big and eventful and monumental for it to be honorable to God? Is there a spirituality that pervades every part of the Christian’s life? Regardless of your zip code, skin color or calling? The answer to the question is of some importance. And there are many who will have trouble buying into such an idea.

There are probably many and various reasons we have trouble believing there is a God of the mundane. Some of those reasons can be traced to our own personal history coupled with the baggage of subpar teaching in the churches we grew up in. Many of us ether inadvertently or explicitly were led to believe that there are spiritual things we do like going to church camp and very unspiritual things like going to the beach with your family. Playing Goofy Golf with your brothers, eating at Captain Anderson’s and throwing the football with your Dad on the beach cannot be spiritual. Can it? Surely the Holy Spirit could not be forming the hearts and minds of people who chose the beach over a missions trip or church camp. Can He?

Regardless of where this belief comes from, there is in it a latent…or not so latent belief that we must fight against. And even if our reasons for believing there is no God of the mundane are multilayered, there is a singular remedy.

This all may come from the terrible lie that if we just do more spiritual stuff, God will love us more. Oh, we would never say that. But functionally, this is how we operate. God likes you more if you do something radical. Is it good to do something radical? Sure, maybe. But God cannot love you more than he loves his own Son. And if you are a believer in the gospel of grace, then you are loved with the love He bestows on his Son. We cannot buy his love through sacrifice and radical risk-taking. Doing so may betray our love for him and his glory. Or it may betray our lack of belief in the sufficiency of what Christ has done.

But if we can rest in the sufficiency of what Christ has done on our behalf perhaps we could also rest in the knowledge we can live a vital spirituality in the midst of the mundane. Me must fight against the belief there is no God of the mundane…which is really unbelief. And we must fight against it tooth and nail. Or beach and sun.

The God of the Mundane- Part 1

The God of the Mundane

Perhaps I am missing something. It is possible.

It appears that the current evangelical climate is one in which faithfulness and spirituality are measured by the eventful and the big – the bombastic. If the waves are not huge and the shifts are not seismic then we assume a kind of carnality. We have redefined radical to the point where the only radical people in the church are those who have sold everything and gone…well, anywhere. I love those people. And that is radical. But for everyone who does not sell everything, you know, those who shop at Target, go to the beach for vacation and grab some sushi (or Cracker Barrel) weekly – is there a spirituality for them that can be called “radical?”

Am I alone in worrying there is no God for the mundane? You know for those who, in the name of Jesus, are simply faithful spouses, honest in business, love their children well and enjoy the world they live in while waiting for the next – is there a God for them?

I think we have gone awry somewhere along the way. It is no longer not enough for a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church, he must now agonize over whether to sell everything to go overseas as a missionary. And you need to know, I am guilty of making people feel guilty about this. I have actually said, “It should be hard to stay where you are.” Someone should have asked me, “Chapter and verse please?” But lets face it, this sounds really good and spiritual. In fact, in many ways it is really hard to stay. It is hard because no one celebrates the day-in and day-out faithfulness that goes unseen by the wider world. It is hard because life is not easy anywhere, there is no idyllic paradise in America where sin is not pervasive and the the devil is not crouching outside of custom-made doors. And it is probably hard for a few because of the guilt heaped up on them who stay and are made to think they are carnal/unfaithful for doing so.

Right now, someone is questioning whether I care about missions at all. You see, that is the problem. I do care about the spread of the gospel. But we have elevated what is seen and what is radical to the point where all other activity (or seeming lack of activity) leads people to think one may not care. That may be damnable. We mustassume there are untold numbers of men and women spreading the gospel of grace quietly throughout their community and making it possible financially for others to go without making a big deal about it and telling everyone on facebook they are doing it.

Part of the problem may be we have made Paul our only hero and not the nameless recipients of his letters. Who would want to be like one of the unknowns when you can be like Paul? What pastor would want to be simply one of Timothy’s appointed elders, never known and never mentioned? What man would want to be simply a day-laborer, who has believed the gospel and against the trends of the day treats his wife and children with dignity and affection, dealing honestly with his neighbors? What woman would want to be a nameless mother who at the risk of ridicule and inconvenience, huddles with other brothers and sisters in The Way and listens to a nameless teacher about Jesus? It is all so mundane.

It is almost like a new legalism is emerging. “Quit your job. Do something crazy. Pick up and move. If you do not then you are suspiciously lacking in the necessary requirements of what we deem ‘spiritual.’

The rock-star preacher thing isn’t helping either. Life seems so mundane after watching them, reading about them and then listening to them. Changing diapers and paying bills on time and being generous and holding the hand of your spouse and caring about your aging parents and having deep friendships and being committed to the church and crying with those who hurt – well, its just not radical enough. So absolutely mundane. And I fear that for most “ordinary Christians”, they do not worship a God who can be glorified in the mundane.

The God of the Mundane

Here is a book review on Matthew Redmond's (not to be confused with Matt Redman) book, The God of the Mundane I have not yet read this book, but just some of the quotes made me want to get it and read it. This is especially for those of us who have never done anything that could be characterized as amazing, radical, monumental for God. I think this accounts for the vast majority of believers who live quiet, "mundane" lives. We need encouragement that we are not out of God's will if we are living quiet faithful live for God. Enjoy.

He affirms that “there is a God for those who are not changing anything but diapers.”

IM Book Review: Why George Bailey Is My Hero

by Chaplain Mike

The God Of The Mundane: Reflections on Ordinary Life for Ordinary People
by Matthew B. Redmond
Kalos Press (2012)

* * *

“For we want to be the George Bailey whose significance has been revealed. However, we do not want to be the George Bailey who leads a mundane life, void of the excitement of the wider world which he longed for. We identify with his frustrations. We run away from the mundane. Or we tolerate it in expectation of something…other. Wanting to have the same kind of impact on people’s lives is not the same as wanting to be George Bailey. No one really wants to be George Bailey.” (Matthew B. Redmond)

It is an interesting fact that, in order to portray the significance of an ordinary life, Frank Capra had to make a movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” that is a fantasy. To communicate the point that simple, mundane living and loving can be extraordinarily meaningful and impactful, the director was forced to create an imaginary world in which angels come to earth to teach heavenly lessons to mortals through supernatural machinations.

Apparently, the actual living of our lives does not seem so “wonderful.”

You might think that Christians and churches and pastors would recognize more the need to encourage one another in the midst of the daily ordinariness of life. However, it is an unfortunate fact that we are often just as caught up in the quest for extraordinary experiences, visible, discernible signs of God’s power and favor, and participation in an endless variety of “great things for God” that keep us from viewing our daily lives with anything approaching a sense of wonder.

Matthew B. Redmond agrees, and he has written a marvelous book which gives an alternate perspective.

How do I love Matt Redmond’s new book?

Let me count the ways.

I love this book, because…

• He is clear-eyed enough to see that, in many Christian circles, “the ordinary is given lip-service, but overlooked like the garnish on a steak dinner.”

• He repents of being a pastor who preached a God who is “waiting for each and every believer to do something monumental.” (Me too, Matt.)

• He affirms that “there is a God for those who are not changing anything but diapers.”

• He recognizes and has the courage to say that most of us have always lived mundane lives, are living mundane lives, and will always live mundane lives. And we need encouragement.

• He is wise enough to read the New Testament as it is and not as we imagine it to be. I am not the Apostle Paul. I am one of those nameless Gentiles in one of his churches. I do not travel the world as my vocation, engaged in daily adventures of the Spirit: winning converts, escaping persecutors, calling down miracles, planting churches, writing the Bible. (Actually that is hagiography that hardly describes Paul’s life either, but that’s another story.) Rather, I am to identify with the “nameless, ordinary believer who listened to Paul and lived faithfully as a farmer, mother, etc., right where they were — they are the standard.”

• He is right to see the disconnect between Paul’s approach to ministry of calling believers to daily faithfulness and our contemporary fetish for zeal and “radical” Christianity. Are we as wont to ask people if they are “willing to be numbered among the nameless believers in history who lived in obscurity” as we are to challenge them to be missionaries or to do something heroic for God?

• When someone asked him to recommend a missionary biography, he encouraged her to find and read a book about a Christian banker first.

• He honors his dental hygienist as an example.

• He writes such breathtaking, quotable passages as this: “There is a spirituality for ordinary people who live ordinary lives. Jesus did not die to change this so much as make it more so. We are not saved from mediocrity and obscurity, the ordinary and the mundane. We are saved in the midst of it. We are not redeemed from the mundane. We are redeemed from the slavery of thinking our mundane life is not enough.”

• He reminds ministers that not everyone is as passionate about or consumed daily with the kinds of things around which a minister’s life revolves.

• He has a strong doctrine of vocation, which recognizes that the plumber who does good work is pushing back the Fall just as much as the minister who preaches.

• He commits a whole chapter to the most neglected NT passage in modern, activist Christianity: 1Thess 4:10-11 – “But we urge you, beloved, to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you…” (NRSV). Live quietly. What a concept.

• He draws lessons from “It’s a Wonderful Life,” my favorite film of all time. I love it for many of the same reasons he records in his book.

• He has the insight to see that, here in the U.S., we approach Christianity just like we approach our weekly lives. In life and work, we’re “living for the weekend.” As Christians, we’re living for the extraordinary, the spiritual high, the transformation, the “moment” when “God breaks through.”

• He honors a friend and her husband and their ordinary life of raising four small children.

• He lifts up simple kindness as a great virtue.

• He likes growing older and the perspective it gives him on life and what really matters. I do too.

• He has the guts and wisdom to say: “But I say, be nobody special. Do your job. Take care of your family. Clean your house. Mow your yard. Read your Bible. Attend worship. Pray. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Love your spouse. Love your kids. Be generous. Laugh with your friends. Drink your wine heartily. Eat your meat lustily. Be honest. Be kind to your waitress. Expect no special treatment. And do it all quietly.”

* * *

For these, and a hundred other reasons, I love Matthew B. Redmond’s new book, The God Of The Mundane.

Unfortunately, teaching with Matt’s combination of spiritual insight, common sense, personal credibility, and winsome wit is rare in far too many segments of the Church today.

It doesn’t have to be.

Read this extraordinary book. Meditate on it. Believe it. Share it with others.

Then, like the shepherds who returned to their flocks after hearing angels sing and seeing the miracle of the Incarnation with their own eyes, we can get up on Monday mornings (like George Bailey did), go to our daily work, and have a wonderful life.

More wonderful than we will ever realize.

The God of the Mundane

Matthew B. Redmond: The God of the Mundane

24JULby Chaplain Mike

A Pork-Butcher's Shop Seen from a Window, Van Gogh

Note from CM: Today, I’d like you to meet another new friend. Please welcome Matthew B. Redmond, who blogs at Echoes and Stars. Matt has been a pastor and now works in banking in Birmingham, AL. He has a book coming out later this year, published by Kalos Press, called The God of the Mundane. During our recent discussions here about “radical” Christianity, I found out about his writing and knew I had to share it with you.

The good news is that Matt is a devoted baseball fan. The bad news is that he roots for the St. Louis Cardinals. This means on this blog we now have writers rooting for the Reds, the Cards, and the Cubs. I guess this is fast becoming the NL Central blog, and of course, that’s me (CM) clinging to Jesus’ words about the last being first.

The following post combines two pieces Matt sent me: “A Sermon I Wish I’d Preached,” and the original “God of the Mundane” post from his blog.

* * *

Almost a year ago I announced my resignation from the ministry. A day later I was working at a bank and since then I have not taught or preached. I do not regret that decision in the least. But regret for the way I way ministered to those in my care has washed over me in devastating waves. There are so many words I wish I had never said, so many lessons I would love to unteach.

And there are a number of sermons I wish I had preached instead.

Of course all the best sermons are forged in the fires of preparation and then beaten into us on the anvil of experience. I could not have preached these sermons then because I had not yet learned what I know now. I had not yet seen nor heard…

So now all the sermons I wish I could have preached roll around in my skull. And sometimes they get written down, like this one I could not let go. For over two years this message has careened against my memories and exploded into a thousand conversations shattering a lot of conventional wisdom, shrapnel everywhere.

There is a God of the mundane.

We live in a culture that celebrates the extraordinary, especially extraordinary people. Athletes, rock stars, actors, actresses, and even those who are famous for being famous have our barely divided attention. We single out the best in just about everything and then they become the benchmark for significance and meaning.

And Christians are not immune. The church has its own celebrities and we have been pointing to them time out of mind because of the extraordinary things they have done in the cause of Christ.

The church is awash in the belief that the extraordinary acts of faith – missions, vocational ministry, street evangelism – are our marks of meaning and significance.

“Do something radical. Or crazy. Whatever you do, don’t be ordinary. Because, obviously, you cannot live a mundane life unto God.”

I wish I had looked in the eyes of homemakers and electricians, accountants and actuaries, farmers and physical therapists and told them differently.

I wish with all my heart I had.

A Pair of Leather Clogs, Van Gogh

I wish I had asked them to read through Paul and Peter and the letters of John and see the stark reverse of extraordinary. The only thing that looks extraordinary in the recipients of these letters is that they believe at all. For the whole world is against them.

I wish I had told them that the most extraordinary thing they can do is be content with an ordinary life.

I wish I had told them to kick pop culture in the teeth and be a nobody.

I wish I had told them to trust the God who created them and then saved them. I wish I had told them the first vocation was gardener not pastor. I wish I had told them all work – even the most boring work you can imagine – can be kingdom work.

I wish I had told them that if you are trying to live a radical life, you will never be radical enough. And how would you know if you were?

I wish I had told them there is a God of the mundane.

* * *

Perhaps I am missing something. It is possible.

It appears that the current evangelical climate is one in which faithfulness and spirituality are measured by the eventful and the big — the bombastic. If the waves are not huge and the shifts are not seismic then we assume a kind of carnality. We have redefined radical to the point where the only radical people in the church are those who have sold everything and gone…well, anywhere. I love those people. And that is radical. But for everyone who does not sell everything, you know, those who shop at Target, go to the beach for vacation and grab some sushi (or Cracker Barrel) weekly — is there a spirituality for them that can be called “radical?”

Am I alone in worrying there is no God for the mundane? You know for those who, in the name of Jesus, are simply faithful spouses, honest in business, love their children well and enjoy the world they live in while waiting for the next — is there a God for them?

I think we have gone awry somewhere along the way. It is no longer not enough for a husband to love his wife as Christ loved the church, he must now agonize over whether to sell everything to go overseas as a missionary. And you need to know, I am guilty of making people feel guilty about this. I have actually said, “It should be hard to stay where you are.” Someone should have asked me, “Chapter and verse please?” But lets face it, this sounds really good and spiritual. In fact, in many ways it is really hard to stay. It is hard because no one celebrates the day-in and day-out faithfulness that goes unseen by the wider world. It is hard because life is not easy anywhere, there is no idyllic paradise in America where sin is not pervasive and the the devil is not crouching outside of custom-made doors. And it is probably hard for a few because of the guilt heaped up on them who stay and are made to think they are carnal/unfaithful for doing so.

Canal with Women Washing, Van Gogh

Right now, someone is questioning whether I care about missions at all. You see, that is the problem. I do care about the spread of the gospel. But we have elevated what is seen and what is radical to the point where all other activity (or seeming lack of activity) leads people to think one may not care. That may be damnable. We must assume there are untold numbers of men and women spreading the gospel of grace quietly throughout their community and making it possible financially for others to go without making a big deal about it and telling everyone on facebook they are doing it.

Part of the problem may be we have made Paul our only hero and not the nameless recipients of his letters. Who would want to be like one of the unknowns when you can be like Paul? What pastor would want to be simply one of Timothy’s appointed elders, never known and never mentioned? What man would want to be simply a day-laborer, who has believed the gospel and against the trends of the day treats his wife and children with dignity and affection, dealing honestly with his neighbors? What woman would want to be a nameless mother who at the risk of ridicule and inconvenience, huddles with other brothers and sisters in The Way and listens to a nameless teacher about Jesus? It is all so mundane.

It is almost like a new legalism is emerging. “Quit your job. Do something crazy. Pick up and move. If you do not then you are suspiciously lacking in the necessary requirements of what we deem ‘spiritual.’

The rock-star preacher thing isn’t helping either. Life seems so mundane after watching them, reading about them and then listening to them. Changing diapers and paying bills on time and being generous and holding the hand of your spouse and caring about your aging parents and having deep friendships and being committed to the church and crying with those who hurt — well, its just not radical enough. So absolutely mundane. And I fear that for most “ordinary Christians”, they do not worship a God who can be glorified in the mundane.

No Super Christians

---Here is an encouraging post, to me, that we are not all super Christians, and that's alright. Just because I am not doing something "world-changing" does not mean I am not living a quiet life, loving people, or being faithful to what God has given me, to the glory of God.

DB

Would you describe yourself as totally in love with Jesus Christ? Or do the words halfhearted, lukewarm, and partially committed fit better?

- Francis Chan, Crazy Love

* * *

We’ve been having quite a discussion since I posted Francis Chan’s video about “Aging Biblically”  yesterday and said that I found it worthy of a rant. Though what he had to say about aging Christians was bad enough, I was more concerned about theentire approach to the Christian life that his words and attitude reflected.

I called it world-denying, dualistic, pietistic, and totally bereft of the Gospel.

When Chan says, “Respectfully, I don’t meet a lot of elderly who live like they are about to see Jesus, and saying goodbye to the things of this world,……and risking more than ever, and some of you are buying stuff like you are going to enjoy it…and saving stuff…my life has been about letting go, letting go, letting go…” his words may carry some truth regarding the dangers of materialism, but they go beyond that. He comes perilously close to denying the existential value of material “stuff” — period. As if God didn’t make that “stuff,” didn’t mean for us to have it, enjoy it, savor it. The only logical end point for this approach, as I said in the comments, is the monastery. That kind of “letting go, letting go, letting go” lifestyle, in my mind, is perfectly legitimate for some, who are called to a cloistered vocation, though I can’t picture any good monk or nun being as frantic about it as Chan sounds.

However, for Chan, the stakes are black and white for every Christ-follower. This is reflected inCrazy Love, where the contrast he draws is between “lukewarm” or “totally obsessed.”  Really. It’s one or the other. Unless a person is (and these are his words) — obsessed, consumed with Christ, fixated on Jesus, risk-taking, radical, wholly surrendered — that person may not even be (likely is not) a Christian. “As I see it, a lukewarm Christian is an oxymoron; there’s no such thing. To put it plainly, churchgoers who are ‘lukewarm’ are not Christians. We will not see them in heaven.”

This is the essence of the kind of “discipleship” people like Francis Chan tell us is necessary:“Do you understand that it’s impossible to please God in any way other than wholehearted surrender?”

Well, and I thought trusting Jesus and what he did was enough.

In Crazy Love, Francis Chan spends a chapter highlighting examples of people he thinks fit the bill of “obsessed” Christians who have shown us what “crazy love” looks like.

• Nathan Barlow, a medical doctor who served in Ethiopia for sixty years. Once when he got a toothache, he had to leave the field to get dental work done. He had the dentist pull allhis teeth and give him dentures so he wouldn’t have to leave for a toothache again.
• Simpson Rebbavarapu, an Indian man who lives solely by faith and runs and orphanage and evangelism ministry.
• Jamie Lang, a woman who adopted a little girl from Tanzania and has returned there to work with Wycliffe to translate the Bible.
• Marva Dawn, a scholar and teacher with severe medical problems who has committed to living a simple life and still drives her 1980 VW Bug.
• Rings, a homeless man who uses his monthly check to buy food for his fellow homeless, which he serves them out of the back of his truck while telling them about Jesus.
• Rachel Saint, whose brother Nate had been one of the five missionaries killed in 1956 in Ecuador. She went back to those same people, lived among them for twenty years, translated the NT into their language, and is now buried there.
• George Mueller, well-known English pastor who started orphanages for two reasons: (1) to care for the needy, (2) to show that God provides by prayer alone.
• Brother Yun, who came to know Christ at age 16, preached the Gospel in China and was imprisoned dozens of times, and on the last occasion had his legs severely beaten and broken. He escaped China and now works for a mission establishing fellowships of believers in all the countries between Jerusalem and China.
• Shane Claiborne, a leader in the “new monastic” movement, who lives and serves in Philadelphia in The Simple Way community.
• The Robynson family, a family of five who celebrates Christmas by making breakfast for the homeless in their community.
• Susan Diego, who feared speaking in front of people, and yet who went to Uganda and led a conference for women.
• Lucy, an older woman who was a prostitute in her early years. She now opens her home to other young women who are in trouble on the streets.

I have to say, stories like these move and inspire me. They always have. I could tell you a hundred more from my own experiences and reading. And I too have been to places where poor Christians, in living conditions that would be intolerable for comfortable Americans, are trusting Christ and serving their neighbors faithfully. I know people who have made great sacrifices and left much behind to serve Christ. I too have used them as examples to encourage and challenge others in their faith and service. Many of them are personal heroes to me.

But I also remember a conversation I had with one of my best friends from college many years ago that chastened me and gave me caution in telling “heroic” stories. He was young and struggling in ministry and feeling very discouraged. He had sought help from others, and they had suggested he read some biographies of great people of faith from the past, Christian leaders they thought might inspire him. He said to me sadly, “Mike, I’ve read several of these biographies, but they don’t encourage me, they make me feel completely inadequate. I’m not like those people.”

What my friend needed was a different story, a story that wasn’t on a heroic level. He needed an example that made it seem like doing the work of an ordinary pastor in a small rural parish was worth it. He didn’t have to go overseas or start some big mission project or adopt a child from an impoverished country. He wasn’t necessarily called to trust God to provide all his needs solely in answer to prayer, or build a great church, or do anything other than be himself, walk with Jesus, and love his neighbors.

I’m afraid, by Chan’s definition, the majority of Christians are “lukewarm,” and therefore unworthy. But I wonder:

• Is it “crazy love” to devote my life to loving my spouse and staying together through thick and thin? If I never did any more than that, would it be enough to prove I’m not a “lukewarm” Christian?

• What if I never did any more than show up at my job day after day and do my work well, as a faithful employee? Would that please God enough?

• What if I’m a private person, a shy person, a deeply wounded person, a physically disabled person, a person with mental or emotional problems? What if I’m a person who needs to be cared for rather than one capable of actively caring for others? What if someone in my family is ill and I must devote most of my time, energy, and resources to serving them in obscurity? Do people like Chan ever talk about passages like 1Cor 12:22-25? “On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.”

• What if I’m part of a small congregation of few means, and I work together with my brothers and sisters to keep it going year after year, and we never do anything particularly creative or risky or “crazy”? What if we just meet every Sunday, teach our children, do a few things now and then to make our community a better place, and support a few missionaries? Is that “obsessed with Jesus” enough?

• What if I take to heart a NT text like 1Thessalonians 4:11-12 and use it to define my understanding of the Christian life — “Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not Christians will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others.”(NLT)?

• And, most importantly, what if I’m a miserable failure and all I can do is come to church and cry out, “God be merciful to me, the sinner!”? Will God be pleased with me? With my doubts? With my lack of trust? With my depression? With my poor social skills or embarrassing appearance? With my constant stumbling and fumbling through the most basic matters of life? Am I worthy enough to be called a disciple?

It seems to me that some preachers simply have no tolerance for ordinary, daily life with all its messiness and imperfection as a realm in which God is at work, and in which we participate through simply being who we are, trusting God, and loving our neighbors. No, the message is loud and clear: do more, give more, sacrifice more, serve more, be more obsessed, take more risks, go farther, reach higher, run faster, be more like this extraordinary person and not like your ordinary self.

Chan’s vision of the Christian life is more, more, more. In Crazy Love, he writes, “If life is a river, then pursuing Christ requires swimming upstream. When we stop swimming, or actively following Him, we automatically begin to be swept downstream. Or, to use another metaphor more familiar to city people, we are on a never-ending downward escalator. In order to grow, we have to turn around and sprint up the escalator, putting up with perturbed looks from everyone else who is gradually moving downward.”

I’m worn out just reading those words.

When did “discipleship” come to mean a manic sprint up a down escalator? I thought it was “walking with Christ.”

I don’t think people who promote this kind of discipleship read the New Testament correctly.

• They realize, don’t they, that Jesus himself only lived a “radical” life of active ministry for two or three years?
• They realize, don’t they, that the exciting, non-stop action of the book of Acts describes primarily the acts of the apostles, who had a different calling than most Christians?
• They realize, don’t they, that none of this frantic, manic, obsessive activism that is being promoted as an antidote to nominal Christianity is represented in any of the epistles?

There are no super-Christians in the New Testament.

Just people, saved by grace, called into a variety of vocations in which we live our ordinary, daily lives in Jesus.

Some may have extraordinary callings, some may have great gifts. Most are normal people, walking with Jesus day by day in the context of family, work, church, and community.

Nor do Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, or John preach at us incessantly to live a “letting go, letting go, letting go” lifestyle that is focused on “heaven” and dismissive of the ordinary stuff of this world. Indeed, they tell us we are free from the voices of religious demand that cry out continually, “More! More! More!” They remind us of a good Creator and a faithful Redeemer who has given us freely all things to enjoy and the greatest gift of all, contentment in his love.

What some people call “crazy love” I call “crazy-making.”

And Jesus calls us away from that:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

- Matt. 11:28-30, MSG