The Hard Questions

A long time ago a German monk began to question some things the Christian church had adopted.  He was a man who looked around him, looked inside himself, and looked at Scripture and came to the conclusion that we have a tendency to make God look the way we want Him to look.  The more this monk explored, the more convinced he was this was true.

He came up with a statement that reflected this truth:  he said that we like to have a 'theology of glory' where we apply our ideas of what is good and glorious to this God--in effect, creating God in our image.  But then he went on to say that what God really teaches us is a 'theology of the cross' where we see God, firsthand and in the flesh, doing the things that represent Him perfectly, but then having to make sense of this fact right alongside the other fact of this God dying on a cross, seemingly defeated and broken.  In this, then, God creates an image of Himself in us and forces us to come to grips with the fact that we need to change.

I think sometimes we do a poor job of taking seriously being Christ-followers.  We need to begin to understand and accept that following Jesus is hard.  Yes, I know that He tells us that following Him is a light 'yoke' but I think that has to do more with not having to bear the weight of being slaves to sin, and less about the suffering that takes place when we follow and obey.

Consider these verses:
Acts 9:16  "I will show him how much he must suffer for my name."  (The Lord speaking of Paul following Him)
Phil. 1:29  "For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him."
1 Peter 1:6  "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials."
1 Peter 4:16  "If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name."

And this doesn't include passages about suffering based on the words "suffered", "suffering", "suffers", or "sufferings"!

Not a very attractive picture, and certainly not one that is good for marketing!

And yet, we accept a view of God that doesn't make demands of us; a view that pushes the idea of sacrifice and suffering aside for something that is much more comfortable and convenient.  I do this far, far too often.

It needs to stop.

I conclude with two comments made by Chris Tomlinson from his book Crave: Wanting So Much More of God:  "I'm learning that just because something is hard, that doesn't mean it's not true.  Comfortable Christians do easy things while Christ-followers do hard things.  Picking up our crosses daily is hard, loving our enemies is hard, turning the other cheek is hard, and embracing the holiness of God that envelopes the hardtack of His wrath and the sweet wine of His mercy is hard.  The hard things require serious answers to our questions about this God we crave."

Truer words could not be spoken--and these are words that all who call themselves Christ-followers need to take seriously.  But I will end with this final comment from Tomlinson:
"These are tough questions with no easy answers, but my cravings for more of God tell me to keep digging.  I'm finding that a soul saturated in Scripture will ultimately find the pure water of God's supreme difference deep beneath the surface, and this different kind of water, a living kind of water, satisfies."

Lord, have mercy on us, and help us to wake up to what is true. . . .

BT