November, 2015
It's an old joke that I'm sure you have heard at one time or another. I'll change it slightly to fit this post. It begins as a man falls off of a cliff and is hanging onto a limb. He is frantically yelling for someone to help him.....Is anybody up there? A deep voice responds...This is God. The man pauses and yells....Is anybody else up there? We want God present, sort of, but no excessive rules or demands or anything like that. We visit His house regularly but He's like Jay Gatsby who holds lavish parties but no one ever sees him. We talk to him on occasion, sort of, Our Father who art in Heaven....blah, blah, blah, or thank you Lord for this food. And then there are those times when we are in trouble. We tell Him how much faith we have in him.....but it's kind of like a corporate CEO telling his employees that he has faith in them as he devises schemes to pick their pocket.
If only that nagging conscience did not remind that if God is....God....the 'holy' God that the Bible proclaims.....and I am man...the 'sinful' man that the Bible proclaims......then surely I cannot really meet Him and live! So we either make Him less holy or us less sinful. Either works! We are lukewarm towards God in America...neither hot or cold. There's a line from that popular 1998 movie You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks character is paging through an expensive old book. When the bookstore employee describes why the book is so special, Hanks responds....So that's why it costs so much....the employee corrects him with....That's why it's worth so much. We see the cost of discipleship and walk away. If only we saw the value we would run to it yelling, as Bunyan's Christian.....Life, Life, eternal life.
We are, many of us anyway, familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's dictum....and the title of his book.....The Cost Of Discipleship....and we in America may be about to find out the truth in a statement in that book....The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for the division which rends cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; they will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near, and they must hold on and persevere until it comes...
I'm no Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm just one who knows that he was right. We have an idea what the cost of discipleship is and it's easy to defer that cost, but we should also know the cost of deferring that discipleship! Just one cost would be loss of discernment. Here's an example:
The following is from an article written by Emily Yahr of the Washington Post titled....Five Things 'The Hunger Games' Franchise Brought To The World. Here is #5..."A RENEWED EXCITEMENT ABOUT Y-A (young adult) BOOKS IN A POST-HARRY POTTER WORLD.....The Hunger Games is about children and teens sent into the arena to kill each other, so it's just a bit darker than "Harry Potter," the other series that reminded kids to love reading....but hey, at least they're reading!"
It's an old joke that I'm sure you have heard at one time or another. I'll change it slightly to fit this post. It begins as a man falls off of a cliff and is hanging onto a limb. He is frantically yelling for someone to help him.....Is anybody up there? A deep voice responds...This is God. The man pauses and yells....Is anybody else up there? We want God present, sort of, but no excessive rules or demands or anything like that. We visit His house regularly but He's like Jay Gatsby who holds lavish parties but no one ever sees him. We talk to him on occasion, sort of, Our Father who art in Heaven....blah, blah, blah, or thank you Lord for this food. And then there are those times when we are in trouble. We tell Him how much faith we have in him.....but it's kind of like a corporate CEO telling his employees that he has faith in them as he devises schemes to pick their pocket.
If only that nagging conscience did not remind that if God is....God....the 'holy' God that the Bible proclaims.....and I am man...the 'sinful' man that the Bible proclaims......then surely I cannot really meet Him and live! So we either make Him less holy or us less sinful. Either works! We are lukewarm towards God in America...neither hot or cold. There's a line from that popular 1998 movie You've Got Mail where Tom Hanks character is paging through an expensive old book. When the bookstore employee describes why the book is so special, Hanks responds....So that's why it costs so much....the employee corrects him with....That's why it's worth so much. We see the cost of discipleship and walk away. If only we saw the value we would run to it yelling, as Bunyan's Christian.....Life, Life, eternal life.
We are, many of us anyway, familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer's dictum....and the title of his book.....The Cost Of Discipleship....and we in America may be about to find out the truth in a statement in that book....The messengers of Jesus will be hated to the end of time. They will be blamed for the division which rends cities and homes. Jesus and his disciples will be condemned on all sides for undermining family life, and for leading the nation astray; they will be called crazy fanatics and disturbers of the peace. The disciples will be sorely tempted to desert their Lord. But the end is also near, and they must hold on and persevere until it comes...
I'm no Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm just one who knows that he was right. We have an idea what the cost of discipleship is and it's easy to defer that cost, but we should also know the cost of deferring that discipleship! Just one cost would be loss of discernment. Here's an example:
The following is from an article written by Emily Yahr of the Washington Post titled....Five Things 'The Hunger Games' Franchise Brought To The World. Here is #5..."A RENEWED EXCITEMENT ABOUT Y-A (young adult) BOOKS IN A POST-HARRY POTTER WORLD.....The Hunger Games is about children and teens sent into the arena to kill each other, so it's just a bit darker than "Harry Potter," the other series that reminded kids to love reading....but hey, at least they're reading!"
