Spinning down the hole

"We gave away the word and sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without condition."

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sometimes I wonder if we're trying too hard to make Christianity easy. We offer Christ's grace as a sort of panacea, a cure all for the problems that afflict the world. But it's really not. Read what He said, the red text in that Bible on the shelf over there. He promised persecution for those that follow Him, not an easy road. Christ offered a better life, but He did not offer an easier life.

But persecution and ostracism don't sell well these days. I wonder if they ever did. So we spin the gospel a bit. We talk about the good things, the beautiful stuff like Christ's peace (a true statement), His love (another true statement), financial security (an iffy statement), physical well being (another iffy statement), and somewhere in there we mix in the impression that things are happy-spiffy-fun-tastic when walking the Christian life (and that's a statement that just doesn't make sense).

... and I was going to write a lot more but my parents just showed up from out of state and I need to go hang out with them.

More later. Seriously.

[Continued... finally. I'm going to try to pick up where I left off. Please bear with me if the transition is rough.]

I want to be clear that the spinning of the gospel I'm talking about isn't the slicked-back-hair-leasure-suit-wearing-smooth-talking-promising-the-world-to-get-your-money type of spin. What I'm talking about is the well meaning attempt to bring more people into church by letting everyone know that they're already forgiven, Jesus loves them, and life is really just moments away from becoming pretty darned spiffy. The theory behind it, this soft-serve gospel (all the forgiveness, none of the responsibility), is that God is in the church, and if people are in the church, well... the two will eventually meet up and start talking. Who knows, there might be some chemistry and then... whammo! You've got yourself a new Christian. It's low-key matchmaking done protestant style.

I guess that sounds a little cynical. After all, Jesus really does love everyone. And people really can be forgiven. But what the soft-serve philosophy never mentions is that Jesus hates sin (and I don't use the word "hate" lightly). Plus, saying that people can be forgiven is not at all the same as saying that they are forgiven.

In the gospel of John, it says that anyone who believes that Christ came to die so that they might have forgiveness for their sins will have eternal life. That's a popular verse, but I think often misused. You see, believing that Christ died for your sins, really getting the idea down deep where you can't use words but just know, involves really not liking sin. After all, it was sin that shed Christ's blood, sin that pierced his hands, sin that killed our savior. So believing that Christ died for your sins is believing that Christ died for you and because of you.

It's really important to know that sin is revolting to Christ before you go accepting His forgiveness of sins. And I think that's the step that we miss when we make the Christian walk into a 12-step program to a better life. We find that people get uncomfortable when we mention sin, so we don't mention it. We talk about other things, prettier things. We think we're saving people because they're following these 12 steps to a Christian life, but we're really just providing a guilt free road to hell. If we really believed that Christ died for our sins, we could not live our lives knowing that we were wilfulling sinning. It would hurt too much.

Christ said that those that love Him will follow his commandments. He didn't expect them to do it perfectly. Everyone falls short. Just look at Peter the night of the crucifiction. When we fall, we get back up, dust ourselves off, and try not to make the same mistake again. But, in order to get back up, we have to acknowledge that we've fallen. We have to acknowledge that it's possible to fall.