THE HIGHEST END: More than the t-shirt or glory bus

Too many Christians are like the young fellow who signed-up for a marathon, showed-up on the morning of the race, put on the free marathon t-shirt and his number, lined-up with all the other racers, and when the shot was fired to begin the race, he went home.  He thought the highest end was getting the t-shirt with bragging rights and all its glory when actually he only got started.

Pervasive in Christian faith communities is a great misunderstanding of life’s highest ends.  At least in much of contemporary American Christianity, life’s highest ends are to get saved and go to heaven.  It’s what I call bus stop faith.  Get saved and wait for the glory bus to take you to heaven.  That’s it.  That’s all.  Escape punishment for sin with the self-limiting idea that Jesus only saves from sin.  He did. He does.  And that’s really a very big thing.  Huge!  Thanks be to God!  What I call bus stop faith, J.T. Walt puts it this way, “You’re a sinner.  You need a Savior. Pray this prayer and you’re good to go.  Now get busy in the activities of the church.”   But surprise! It’s not all about me, or you, or us, or getting the t-shirt, or just being busy until the bus comes!

 The songwriter got it right.  It is amazing grace.  But our salvation from sin and a free pass to heaven are not the highest ends.  There is so much more.  They’re just the start, the beginning of a journey, a long walk, an acquaintance process that also occasions being saved (restored) to the likeness of Christ.  There's so much more, or as John Wesley put it, there's “being perfected.”  Forgiveness of sins and faith in Christ’s redemptive work are getting off the starting line of a marathon.  They're the initial one hundred yards in a cross-country road trip called “the rest of life.”

If getting saved and going to heaven aren’t the highest ends, then restoration to the likeness of Christ, or holiness must be.  Right?  Wrong!  Restoration, being perfected, having the clay of our lives formed into something functional and beautiful is an ongoing process, something that happens along the journey, a synergistic sanctification.  But along the way in the process of living in obedient faith, remaining in Christ (John 15:5), continuing “in Him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith” (Colossians 2:6&7), God is at work forming the clay and preparing us for the moment for which we are hungry and thirsty for something more.  In the process of a deepening acquaintance with God, in an ever-increasing intimacy with Him, there comes a profound desire for God to do a deeper work, a complete cleansing of heart and life. Until then there is a holy discontent, a conviction that there is more and that only God by his grace can make that a reality.  It is a moment of identifying with the prayer of King David as he proclaimed with passion (Ps. 51:10-12) –

 “Create in me a pure heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me. . .  Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me.”

Then by grace through faith again, we accept the unimaginable gift of God’s grace.  He does purify our hearts completely making us entirely fit, and filled for his highest ends.  Is a pure heart and restoration the highest ends?  No!  They are the shaping, cleansing, and filling of the vessel of our lives with Christ the Water of Life.  They are God’s preparation of us for the purpose of the highest ends, our fulfillment of the Great Commission.  He desires that we love Him back with the holy love with which he has filled our hearts and given us the power to love Him and others, and He desires that we love others by letting God’s pure love spill over into the lives of others as we love ourselves.  Such upward, inwards and outward daily expressions of holy, sanctified love is one of the highest ends, but still not the highest end.

We find the highest end clarified by Jesus and the Apostle Paul.  In Matthew 5:16, Jesus says “Let your light shine in such a way that others may see your good works and glorify the Father.”  Paul puts it this way to the Ephesians (3:20 and 21), Now to Him who is able to do more than all we ask or imagine (now that we grasp the magnitude of God’s love and he has filled us to the measure of the fullness of God, Eph. 3:18&19), to Him GLORY!  Glory to God is the highest end.  Ultimately, it is not about us.  It’s all about him, GLORY TO GOD!

Breathe on me Breath of God,

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love what thou dost love,

And do what thou wouldst do.

Breathe on me Breath of God,

Until my heart is pure,

Until with thee I will one will,

To do and to endure. 

Edwin Hatch (1835-89)

THE SANDWICH OF GRACE

You can learn much from just watching others.  Years ago, I found myself in my first encounter with an Asian style of debate, a kind of rhetorical sandwich.  It was at a large round table in the conference table at the World Health Organization’s regional headquarters in Manila, the capital of The Philippines.  It was a gathering of deans and professors from several universities throughout Asia and the Pacific in discussions on how to collaborate in research and training in public health and community medicine.  I was a young University of Hawaii professor at the table respectfully watching and listening to my elder academics.

What I observed has guided my work ever since.   The give and take of the group’s conversation was often like a series of sword fights.  Two esteemed deans would joust back and forth on opposite sides of an argument, but they would do it so very politely, with respectful acknowledgement of each other, but not without forcefully making their points and holding their positions.  Every time someone would pick-up the sword of argument, they would begin their comments with the most kind and affirming statements about their verbal opponent.  The rhetoric was so lovely that you would think they were the very best of friends.  Then they would attack.  The thrust of their argument, aimed at the heart of the other’s position, was struck without mercy.  Nothing was held back with intent to destroy their opponent’s reasoning and emerge the victor.  Then, to my surprise, they immediately returned  to a lavish outpouring of sincere compliments and effusive praise of the person whose position they had just eviscerated.  What happened next?  Their opponent would return the favor and repeat the pattern:  unabated praise and affirmation (bread), unabashed, devastating argument (meat), and then more unreserved praise and sincere affirmation (another slice of bread).  That was the Asian rhetorical sandwich.

I subsequently experienced the same sandwich style in correspondence:  first affirmation, second the tough news, and then a closing with affirmation.  It seemed to say  “I love and respect you, but here’s what needs to change, and yet I still love you.”  I learned over the years that beginning and ending with affirmation helps the reader or listener feel less threatened by the core message.  

After all the years later I am wiser thanks to my Asian colleagues. As a westerner (American) back then, they surprised me.  I was accustomed to a culturally different approach.   In the American style of Wyatt Earp I expected a shoot-out at the OK Corral with scowling faces and shots aimed at the heart.  In reflection the Asian sandwich of debate held critically helpful elements of dignity and grace.  

Today in reading my Bible (Joshua 1:5-9) I discovered that God used a sandwich of grace with Joshua as He appointed him to take over leadership of the people of Israel and cross the Jordan into the Promised Land.  God speaks affirmation, then the core (meat) message, and ends with affirmation:

                    Joshua

“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you:  I will never leave you nor forsake you.  Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them.  Be strong and courageous.  Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you;  do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.  Do not let the Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it.  Then you will be prosperous and successful.  Have I not commanded you:  Be strong and courageous.  Do not be terrified.  Do not be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

The sandwich pattern God still uses is first affirmation, then clear, firm message of direction and expectation, and finally affirmation again.  Even the meat of the message is love, often tough love.  By a close reading of the Gospel of John, chapters 14, 15, and 16, we find Jesus engaging the same elements and pattern of affirmation, direction, and affirmation.  It is a pattern throughout scripture and fits with the overarching pattern of how God draws us into increasing intimacy with him. God affirms through grace.  He shows his love and waits for an obedient response. Then he affirms our obedient faith with more grace.  It’s a dynamic, interpersonal relationship of interactive love.  Praise be to God!

His grace has no limits, his love has no measure,

His love no boundaries known unto man,

For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,

He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

Annie Johnson Flint (1866-1932)

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WHOLE LOAF?

When Jesus said, "I am the bread of life" he meant the whole loaf, not just half of one.  Today the body of Christ in America looks more and more like half a loaf.

Here's why . . .

The Barna Group is a market research firm specializing in the study of religious beliefs and behavior of Americans.  In 2011, they completed a study of 15,000 Americans that brings to light one of the most compelling pictures of contemporary Christianity beyond what one might imagine.   Their results are so astonishing, we have to ask, "What happened to the whole gospel?"   

The Barna Group researchers clustered their findings along a continuum of ten groups or what they call “Ten Transformational Stops” along the journey with the percentage of the national sample that falls into each of the ten stops or categories.  The ten categories and their percentages include:

1.  Unaware of sin                                                                                         1%

2.  Indifferent to sin                                                                                      16%

3.  Worried about sin                                                                                   39%

4.  Forgiven for sin                                                                                         9%

5.  Involved in faith activities                                                                       24%

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -                                                                              -----

6.  Holy discontent                                                                                         6%

7.  Broken by God                                                                                          3%

8.  Surrender and submission                                                                         1%

9.  Profound love of God                                                                              0.5%

10. Profound love of people                                                                         0.5%

JD Walt, in Seedbed Sower's Almanac & Seed Catelog,
Seedbed, Sow for a Great Awakening, Seedbed.com, 2015

Notice how the major activity falls between categories 3 through 5.  After 5, the percentages drop precipitously.  Another way to say this is that 89% of the persons surveyed are accounted for in the first five “stops” (1-5) and Only 11% go on to be represented in one of the upper 5 categories (6-10).  

The movement beyond step 5 and onward to 10 reflects spiritual progress toward spiritual formation, maturity, holiness, and empowered service to the glory of God.  Christians having been justified by grace through faith seem to stop there and get busy in religious activities with little to show beyond that.  It is a kind of bus stop religion:  get saved, wait around for the glory bus to heaven, and in the mean time do a little good.  As you can see steps 3 to 5 seem to be saying “You’re a sinner.  You need a Savior. Pray this prayer and you’re good to go.  Now get busy in the activities of the church.”(J.D. Walt, 2015)*

The overwhelming majority of American Christians are living out only a half gospel.  It would seem that for many the work of evangelism only brings people to a redemptive point of salvation from sin and fails to take them any further other than keeping them busy in religious activities.  The data shouts that very few go on to do serious discipleship work of restoration to the Imago Dei and holiness.  It is no surprise that the majority Christians remain immature, babes in Christ, drifting either into a state of being nominal Christians, or of a dissipation of their faith, or both.  The alternative is to embrace forms of evangelism that continue to establish people in the Kingdom, and to facilitate an intentional life of discipleship leading to holiness, purity of heart, and fidelity to the Great Commandment and Great Commission.

The faith communities that identify with the saving work from sin offered by Jesus Christ need to get on with the second half of salvation, salvation to the restoration of the Image of God in every believer, holiness after the likeness of Christ. May the findings of the Barna Group become so well known and compelling that they fan the flames of passion for a Great Awakening.  We are over due for a national repentance by Christians who are leading lives that fall short of God’s best and the sanctifying and glorifying grace that God intends for all who confess that Jesus is Lord.

*J.D. Walt, "The Whole Gospel:  Getting on with the second half of salvation,"
  Seedbed Sower's Almanac and Seed Catalog, 2015.