Believing Must Also Mean Following

Believing Must Also Mean Following

The man loved Jesus with all his heart. Since that day thirty years ago when he believed that Jesus was the Son of God and that faith in Him was the only path to eternal life, Stephen’s life had never been the same. He married a believing woman and they started a family. Throughout their marriage they were active in a Baptist church and more often than not they prayed together. They both had a heart for missions, and many times they had visiting missionaries over for dinner.

They had two boys and one girl, and they all went to Christian schools. The family portrait for the church directory looked almost like a Norman Rockwell painting. Stephen was so proud and so thankful to God. His firstborn, a daughter, graduated from High School and attended a Christian college. She aspired to be a missionary, but eventually met a Christian young man and they began a life together.

His oldest son also attended a Christian college and felt called to be a teacher in a Christian High School. After he graduated from college he was hired in a large Christian High School and met a wonderful young lady who taught English. They were married in that church and one year later saw their first born enter the world. Stephen was bursting with gratitude.

Their youngest son was always somewhat different although never openly rebellious. But when he entered his senior year in High School it became increasingly evident that there was more than just a different personality. This boy never showed any interest in girls and he kept to himself. He seemed pleasant and was a good student. Stephen was not overly concerned.

But somewhere in the middle of his senior year, Stephen took his son on a fishing trip. It would be just the two of them. They drove the rented boat to the middle of the lake, put their lines in the water, and waited for a big bass to come calling. But as they waited, they began to talk. At first it was about sports, then it was about what his son would do after High School, and some other things. But then his son asked his father a question.

“Dad, can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” replies Stephen. “Anything.”

“Do you ever feel like you’re…different?”

“Just ask your mother!”

“No, I’m serious. I feel as though I am completely different than other guys my age.”

And here is where I come out of the narrative and enter into my personal perspective. The young man was confiding to his father about his difficult feelings. He did not feel the same way about girls as did his male friends, and he struggled with feelings about other guys. Being raised in the church he knew what the Scriptures said about those feelings, and that just added to his struggle.

Now any father knows how he feels about his children. Whether adopted or from his own loins, a true father experiences affections for his children that go beyond what he is capable of actually expressing. Our hearts speak to us in ways that are more easily revealed by mothers, however our feelings of love and affection are unmistakable. So what does a father, a Christian father, feel when his son or daughter reveals that they have same sex attractions? He knows that they will struggle almost their entire life, and he also knows that there are no neat and succinct incantations that can chase away such feelings.

Most Christian fathers have heard very unkind words spoken by believers about gay people. And when someone they love reveals that struggle, the vicious things people have said swirl around in that father’s head. There are many thousands of Christian families who are experiencing the heartbreak and confusion associated with a loved one who has same sex attractions. I cannot imagine what a father feels whose son has confided in him about his “different” feelings and that same father has to endure the insensitivity and the harsh rhetoric emanating from the ecclesiastical and conservative strongholds.

Even some famous people have called for gay people to be killed, and I have read a face book entry by one of my former high school classmates calling for the same. Many times indifference is all a gay person can hope for. The church has paraded her doctrinal credentials concerning homosexuality but has refused to parade her credentials concerning love, humility, and grace. Those attributes seem to be confined to allowing a car to cut in front of you during rush hour. How very sad.

People all over the world experience deep and penetrating pain and fear. And since faith in Jesus Christ is the exclusive way to eternal life, the church has been called to be both a gospel life and a gospel mouthpiece. But that kind of witness takes a self denying sacrifice, and the easier course is to join a moral fight that “boldly” embraces a portion of Biblical truth while assigning other portions to a much smaller dimension. To use homosexuality as a proof of your “orthodoxy” is theological cowardice as well as a clever disguise concerning your vast failures to not only live up to the life of Christ, but your refusal to even see it.

The “do unto others” verse is nothing more than a worn out cliché which has been so eroded that it means nothing in today’s fast paced and self absorbed community of faith. We are too busy championing moral and economic issues to be bothered about how we treat people, to say nothing about how we see them. The faith that is supposed to share and emulate the Lord Jesus has all but disappeared in the west. We now have constructed an ecclesiastical structure which pays our “servant” leaders handsomely, produces all kinds of professional materials to guide us in Biblical “learning”, and in general exists for the encouragement and glorification of man.

And when an issue like the gay issue presents itself, the church continues to make full use of such a thing by being reactionary. And when a preacher says that homosexual behavior is a sin, and when the listening congregation nod and loudly say “Amen!”, well they all can retire to their homes, overeat and watch football, but with the satisfaction that they have not succumbed to the world’s liberal agenda. However that is not the complete story.

It is not enough for us to avoid certain sins and identify them as sin. We are also called to a more proactive life that must begin with denying ourselves. Before we can bask in the warmth of a doctrinal tanning bed, we must go without the camp bearing His reproach. Jesus did not come to castigate sinners or to parade His own perfect view of everything. He came to save that which was lost, and in that redemptive endeavor Jesus often was seen in the company of sinners who today would be sermon fodder for the Biblical Bourgeoisie. Why didn’t the Son of God just come to earth as a full grown man and die on the cross one week later? Why the 33 years? It is obvious that we are supposed to study, meditate, and emulate the life of our Master as revealed in the gospels. What other reason can their be?

But in today’s literate and enlightened church community, it is light years easier to embrace doctrinal truth than it is to emulate the Lord Jesus, which by the way is also doctrinal truth. Just a cursory reading of the Sermon on the Mount is an arresting indictment of how we have strayed from the essence of what it means to be a disciple. Church discipleship classes are taught exclusively in classrooms when they should be taught on the street as well. And when a believer can regurgitate our well worn doctrinal mantras he is proclaimed to be a disciple, when in fact he may be far from it.

A computer can be programmed to recite doctrinal truth, but only a true disciple can live a life that is demonstrably a revelation of the incarnate gospel narratives. I have primarily used the gay issue to provide a mirror, but this issue permeates the entire landscape of human culture. If we are followers of Jesus Christ, and if this culture is fallen in all its ways, then should not our lives be remarkable exceptions with such glaring diversions from the cultural practices that men everywhere cannot help but notice? But instead we have become an amalgam of moral tenants, capitalism, nationalism, and with a muffled set of redemptive truths that live on paper rather than beat inside our hearts.

When I became a believing follower of Christ in 1975, the term “born again” was still in vogue. When a lost person believed on the Lord Jesus Christ their entire lives were changed and continued to change. Today it takes all kinds of manipulation just to keep people coming to the Sunday morning gathering. Thirst for the Word? A dynamic and growing prayer life? A consuming desire to see souls saved? Weeping over people’s sins? Who are we kidding, that doesn’t even describe preachers anymore.

But we can take solace in this: We believe in Biblical inerrancy. Can there be any deeper and self serving hypocrisy that that?

Lk.6: 45 - A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.
46  And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?