I am a fan of the movie the Breakfast Club. When it came out I copied it on our old VCR from HBO and it was available at any time. Bender is the most intriguing character. Bender lives in what we are expected to believe is a poor home, deficient not only in material wealth, but also love, which is its biggest issue. Never mind that the Bender's by worldly standards are extremely wealthy. They have a home, electricity, refrigeration, food on demand, and cigarettes. Compared to their peers though, the Benders are cut from the fabric of the lower class both financially and socially. It does not matter that John Bender is clearly an intelligent young man. What matters is his parents are the working poor and therefore his prospects of advancement are limited and Bender knows it. Bender the young man knows he is just as intelligent and capable if not more so than his peers, but doors they walk through without even thinking about are not opened to him so he becomes this rebel and constant thorn in the side of the school, his peers, and his family.
Now consider being a Christian today. How can we reconcile our material wealth, worldly knowledge, and millennia of accurate theological knowledge available to us at any time for free or with the minimal outlay of a few bucks with the fact the modern Christian seems to struggle with the details and actual righteousness we are called to not only exhibit, but to model for the world?
This is and has been a constant battle for me. My knee jerk response is go simple. Remove all distractions. Spend more time in the Word and in prayer and do the right thing. However, even after doing a moderately good job at the above, it still feels like it is not enough. It is almost as if I cannot get out of my own way and many of the reasons are things I have no control over.
For example, I cannot control I was born into an apparently affluent society. I cannot control I was sold into debt slavery and servitude the moment I was born and I cannot control no one told me the entire thing was and is a lie held together by collective ignorance and willful delusions. The national heroes and the holidays and the make believe law and order and civil institutions are just that, make believe. They are not real and exist much like the set of a movie. Put in place for a single shot at one time or another and then left to litter the landscape.
So what does God require? I will start with Luke 9 in its entirety because of its recency bias. Jesus is living, walking, and teaching the disciples on a daily basis. They have seen him perform miracles. Jesus has raised children from the dead and given them back to their parents. He has restored life from a distance and taught the disciples and Apostles like no one else has. They know being in his presence makes them special for in all the history of the world, no one has been like Jesus. This is a unique moment and they are near center stage because they are near Jesus. This is how Chapter 9 in Luke has finally brought me to where I always needed to be to answer and solve this riddle that has bothered me for years and years.
Jesus commissions the twelve. He sends them out with the same power He has. They can cure diseases and exercise power and authority over demons. He has given them this power so they can do one thing, preach the Kingdom of God and heal the sick. I do think this heal the sick goes well beyond the ill and infirm. We are talking those people, but also the lost in need of salvation. The truly sick in soul and spirit.
The Apostles return amazed at their power and what they have done. They did what Jesus asked them to do. Jesus takes them away and they go into the wilds away from people for greater instruction and learning. The masses heard about Jesus and the Apostles leaving Dodge and followed them so Jesus changes his plans and begins teaching this large mass of people. Thousands have come to hear Him. The Apostles see the risk and danger in having 10,000 unfed people and warn Jesus and He tells them to do it themselves. Feed the masses. I suspect this, “You give them something to eat,” has much more depth than just food for the stomach. Jesus is teaching the masses about the Kingdom of God and now he tells the Apostles to feed the masses likewise. They of course balk and stutter about a lack of food because they are focused on the physical and material. SO Jesus takes their meager 5 loaves and two fish and feeds everyone with it and has more leftovers than they started with. Another miracle.
Now Luke moves us to a private moment where Jesus is praying alone and the disciples come to Him. He asks them about his identity and they relay the same incorrect options as Herod earlier in the chapter, but this is not good enough for Jesus. He asks them specifically, “Who do YOU say that I AM?” (Emphasis my own). Peter boldly says the Messiah and the first mission is complete. Now the world knows because these twelve know. Part A of the Mission is complete. Part B is to prepare these twelve to carry on after He leaves.
Jesus tells them the religious leaders of their time will reject him and not only will they reject him, they will kill him, but God will raise him on the third day. Luke does not record any mention of the Apostles responding, but we know from the other Gospels that they do not like hearing Jesus will leave them in this manner and refuse to believe it and pledge their loyalty and willingness to fight for his life etc.
Jesus corrects their ignorance and says if you want to be like me, then you must truly be like me. Take ups your cross and follow me. This is where things get hard. Jesus’ teaches a selflessness and focus on the mission of God that is hard to replicate, especially as we are mired in our own culture and struggles. Jesus seems to ignore the reality of all that people are wound up in and effectively says we need to drop all that jive and just get with His program and trust God to take care of the rest.
Luke moves the party away and they climb a mountain and we get to see the three favorite disciples with Jesus. The inner circle of the inner circle gets to see reality. They see Jesus transformed into his real self and see Him attended to and in discussion with Moses and Elijah about the coming end in Jerusalem. This is another one of those unique moments in time like there is no other. We get a chance to see behind the curtain that Jesus is the real deal as a voice rings out from heaven again saying, “Listen to my Son!”
Immediately after this amazing scene, you would think the story would move to even greater accomplishments and understanding by the twelve. But it goes the exact opposite direction. Upon returning from this special encounter they run into a distraught father and his only son. This father explains to Jesus his son is possessed and is going to die and if his son dies, his world crashes. The Apostles failed to save his son, but Jesus can do it. Jesus makes a bold statement about how long must he be surrounded by the perverse and faithless. He heals the mans son and explains to the Apostles that some demons can only be cured through fasting and prayer. Luke does not give us this insight, but Matthew does. This is like a secret recipe for conquering evil and Luke just ignores and focuses on the Apostles lack of faith as Jesus tells them again and they need to mull the words and keep them close, “He would be betrayed into the hands of men.” The Apostles didn’t understand…
And instead of inquiring, they argue about who is the greatest. Jesus realizes how far off the mark they are so he grabs a child, perhaps even the same child h just saved and pulls the kid close and looks at his disciples and says, whoever receives this little child in My name, receives me, and Him who sent me.” In other words, they needed to look to those who could not advance them. They needed to have concern for those who offered them nothing in return. They needed to place others before themselves as servants of God.
The Apostles being the clowns they were, ignore the lesson and point out how good they had been in defending their turf because they saw a guy casting out demons in the name of Jesus and they forbade him to do so, because he was not a disciple walking with Jesus. Jesus very gently shows them this dude had more faith than they did because he was doing what Jesus asked them to do, without even having the benefit of daily living and instruction and they were wrong to forbid his labor because they are on the same team.
Jesus begins his final journey to Jerusalem to face off against the forces of darkness. He sends runners before Him to announce his travel plans and the party enters a Samaritan village. This village, knowing Jesus was not staying, teaching, healing, and feeding them reject his presence and the Disciples seeing an opportunity to exercise their God-given divine authority ask Jesus if they should call down fire like Elijah and destroy the village. Jesus points out this is exactly the wrong attitude to take and they continue to the next village on their way to Jerusalem.
We have the final scene in what is Luke 9 with Jesus calling those who follow him to discipleship and faith. A man says he will follow, but he has to bury his dad first. Jesus throws their entire world view upside down again and says leave the dead be, preach life and the kingdom of God, this is of most importance. We have Jesus three times telling folks to stop what they are doing and follow Him. Nothing else is of any importance compared to this calling and it is this calling that all people who become His disciples must follow.
This is the struggle of the ages. This challenge has bothered me and cost me sleep and at no point until today, while pondering these things and throwing my trash in the dumpster, did I come up with an answer that satisfied. In every age, individuals have collective challenges and their society/culture has an identity that must also be reconciled with God’s call. What does this mean?
At one time we are all pagans living in a pagan society. (Early OT)
Then someone, anyone receives the truth and begins championing it. Think Moses. The rest of society is pagan, but Moses knows the truth and now he must engage them.
People begin coming around. They accept the truth, but they have not really changed the very fiber of their being to “follow” the truth.
So they cannot enter the Promised Land, they must wander in the Wilderness and learn to trust God for everything. God to bring them food, shelter, and security.
When all of their self-reliance is finally gone, they can enter the Promise and must trust God each step. God delivers every time, but every time we falter, God also bring justice.
Eventually the land is conquered. We are no longer pagans in a pagan world. We are Christians in a Christian world, if we can keep it.
Which of course we cannot. It does not take long before the joy and security of being in God’s hand gets too normal and our women start wearing makeup and jewelry and our men start visiting prostitutes and we throw our kids to the wolves because we have the world by the balls. Or so we think.
We are now an odd mixture of pagan ideas interspersed with the knowledge of the truth, but these two concepts are irreconcilable. You cannot have one foot in each camp because the minute your foot leaves the camp of God, you leave the camp entirely. Without even realizing it, what was once Christian at the individual level and society wide level has become a shell of truth hollowed out and filled with refuse and poop.
God fully rejects what is and calls the few who remain true to come out of her and stay faithful. This is the trajectory of men and our struggle and my struggle. There are more stages and periods in there but I am already long winded. My problem is being part of the remnant above and not really being honest with myself about the conditions of the world around us. Like the churches in Revelation, we do not pick our time or our location, but we do pick our response. God calls us to faithfulness and this is our fight today. We are Christians living in a pagan society pretending it is still Christian. Very much like Israel before the Assyrian and Babylonian defeats. Israel, whether we look at it as a whole or as the North Kingdom and Judah thought they could not lose because they had the truth at one time, even if they no longer followed it and it was gathering dust in their library. The truth was available to them, so God could not reject them. This is America and much of the world right now.
So what is the prescription? Is is withdrawal, simplify, and reject modernity? Yes and no. The solution as best I can reckon is to remain faithful. We did not set the conditions we were born into and we are powerless to change them. What we can do is remain faithful and follow Jesus. This will require choices everyday to follow Jesus , but we cannot get wrapped around the axle of things outside of our control. We have our own dragons to slay and cities to conquer and the first of these is our own flesh and weakness.