Cliché-anity

“Much of Christianity is trying to make things fit logically that do not match what you are seeing in front of your face.”

Well now aint’ that the truth. This is a quote that could come from a pastor or a seeker, a well-seasoned Bible professor or a disillusioned young person. It’s actually a comment I read from a “former-Christian” now atheist mother who writes about her journey from faith to reason, both relative terms I think. The funny thing is, I found myself agreeing with a lot of what she says. Here are some of her thoughts in a nutshell:

• 21st Century Christians are basically the worst. They don’t even read the Bible they so easily thump over everyones head.
• These above mentioned Christians are hypocrites because their words never match their actions.
• The world just sucks, trying to reconcile a loving God to this hot mess of a planet we live on is too hard.

I’m paraphrasing her thoughts, but that’s pretty much the heart of it. Trying to fit the pieces together is an impossible and daunting task. I have to say, I’m grateful I don’t have a mind that cares to go to great lengths to disprove the creator of the universe. Call me provincial, but it seems like a ton of work. I sat through my share of college courses on the subject and none of it really impressed me much. I’m not criticizing critical thinking or asking hard questions, I just think the answers are usually not as complicated as we make them.

I’m always intrigued by people who have “left the faith” so to speak, the ones who at least have been presented with truth, lived it for awhile and then decided it’s not for them. My belief is that if you experience the real thing, the real Jesus, you’d never depart from Him. He’s too good. The truth is, they’ve never truly “tasted” as the Psalmist puts it, that the Lord is good (34:8). They’ve tasted bitterness, hypocrisy and indifference from fellow ‘believers’ and their perfectly valid questions have gone unanswered for too long. So they depart.

The basics of Christianity involve some paradoxes – we must die to live, become the least to be the greatest, be poor to become rich. We don’t value or live by these commands because we’re intent on our own ways and our own understanding. In the eyes of the world, surrender and humility get you no place fast. We want to be free to “be ourselves”, but our freedom comes through obedience.

It’s far too complicated a subject to solve with cliché sayings, these are people’s hearts. Her wounds are not my own and her experiences are different than mine. You know what she’s right about? Jesus-followers don’t know the Bible very well. By allowing the wrong people to spoon-feed us junk sayings and ideas, we lose. Christian-ish clichés like “everything happens for a reason” and “God never gives us more than we can handle” don’t save people from falling off the cliff, they push them right off of it.

So yes, trying to square Jesus with this world and reconcile what we see in front of our faces with what the Bible says is going to cause us to pause. It should. The issue is that we don’t dig deeper.

To the Christian who is a little too comfortable with just the nice-sounding platitudes, please go deeper. The pressure’s off, Jesus is the one who changes hearts. He wants to use you though, and we have a duty to share the good news. Know how to love someone back from the brink with actual answers. Remind them that God isn’t up in heaven somewhere eating grapes and being indifferent to us. Tell them about the reality of the unseen world and how the enemy works overtime to convince us that what we see is what we get.

Some people are just dead set on disproving everything a Christian has to say.  There’s always a “yeah BUT…” question to follow any answer. A hard heart is a difficult thing to pierce. But to the disillusioned who are turned off by all these shenanigans carried out by so-called Jesus followers… please pick up His Word. Don’t equate human behavior with the truth of who Christ is. We are all works in progress.

A lot of our drama could be avoided if we understood what He says about who HE is and who WE are in Him. He wants us to love Him with our hearts AND minds (Luke 10:27) which means we don’t check our logic at the door, but we are open to what He says. In return, He promises to actually guard those same hearts and minds with His peace (Philippians 4:7). Well, well well. Now that is an excellent promise if I ever heard one. I give Him my heart and He guards it. I give Him my mind, and He keeps it in perfect peace.

No fluffy sayings. Real meat and potatoes stuff that you can chew on. Christians need it. Atheists need it. Everyone in between needs it. All for Jesus and Jesus for all.