Should Jesus Be A Christian's "Crutch"?

"You Christians are so weak. Why don't you learn to stand on your own two feet? You just use Jesus as a crutch."

Who of us has not had someone level these kinds of accusations against us? Now, one of the rejoinders we might use is, "Yes, Jesus is my crutch and I'm happy with that." Or, we might say, "Yes, he is. What's yours?" These show a certain assurance and deference on our part for sure. But after having considered this anew, it dawned on me that such an answer does not rightly represent our faith or the God of our faith. Why?

First, crutches are used by folk who cannot walk rightly due to an infirmity. The crutch then makes up for work that they can only partially do by themselves. The point is that THEY are doing the work! And even if it is LIMITED ability, it is still THEIR ability, isn't it? Salvation, however, is not something that we do in and of ourselves as most would attest. So using the term "crutch" for Jesus is not accurate. The assumption is that we bring something to the healing process. This may seem to be nit-picking, but its truth bears itself out.

Second, Christ cannot rightly be said to be a "crutch" because he doesn't support us, he completely changes us! In salvation, Jesus doesn't come and prop up in us what is failing or weak. No, he RE-CREATES a new man; he TRANSFORMS us! We are all familiar, are we not with Paul's teaching in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." We don't need a crutch, but much more than a crutch. We need radical surgery, a completely new life!

Third, Jesus is not a crutch because he is not a temporary fix. Someone breaks a leg, then uses a crutch until they are able to put weight on that weakened appendage until they can eventually use it. Never in a true believer's life will he simply "use" Jesus until he is better and able thenceforward to operate under his own power. No, the work of the new birth is for life!

Fourth, Jesus cannot be said to be a crutch in that he is not simply to be viewed as an "add-on" to our otherwise adequate life. We can use a crutch and then set it aside when not needed. But when can this be said of faith in Christ? 1) We cannot simply "take up" Christ to further our own cause, and 2) at no point could we ever be in a position to "set him aside" when he is no longer necessary.

Now, these points may seems a bit "over the top" or finicky. But I think that they surface a deeper and far more important issue, the radical alteration found in the nature of the new birth. If we are going to take advantage of such assaults against our faith as the one that starts this post, then shouldn't we try to steer the attacker in the best direction? This, I think, is the crux of the situation!

RISE ABOVE THE AMBUSH OF EVIL

News services know that bad news sells. The worse the news, the greater the viewership, and, of course, the larger the revenue (which in a consumerist society is all that matters). Everywhere, leaders are falling, whether politicians or ministers! Our TVs are simply awash in crime and sex, and every manner of evil. Anyone with half a conscience reels after a while. We get disheartened. We begin to wonder if there’s anyone who seeks God. Anyone?!

Warning! Watch out that the preponderance of iniquity does not cause you to become cynical of all people or skeptical of even the possibility of good motives. Distrust and pessimism are not necessarily virtues of the worldly wise, but they may be signs of faithlessness. It’s one thing to astutely recognize the sins in society, quite another to be controlled by them. Martin Luther, the reformer said, “You cannot prevent the birds from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair!” This is a call to Christians to prevent evil from building its nest in our hearts.

Scripture Always Trumps Evil

Karl Barth is purported to have said that we should “read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.” The assumption here is that we are to be aware of what is going on in the world, but that we should interpret that knowledge in light of the Bible. That is wise advice.

We cannot prevent most evils from occurring. But we can control how those evils affect our minds. Paul said that he’d learned how to thrive in both good and bad times through faith in Christ (Phil. 4:11-12). Further, he exhorts us to control those things upon which we concentrate. “Whatever is true, . . . honorable, . . . just, . . . pure, . . . lovely, or commendable, . . . think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). He is not commending ignorance or naïveté, but a deliberate bond to God’s superior ways—a coalition with Christ. God has his way in the affairs of mankind. Therefore, we are not to fear man, “who is [only] able to kill the body,” but we are to fear (love and respect) him who is “able to destroy both body and soul in hell” (Matt. 10:28). This objective fact should lead to subjective glee!

God, through Isaiah warns, “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread (Isaiah 8:12). Israel had habitually turned away from theocracy (God-rule) to other nations for help to overcome their enemies. This was conspiracy, which refers not to a mere alliance, but conspiracy with treasonable intent! (See Young, 1:310).

Summary

Two Scriptures offer correction:

Don’t let your good be evil spoken of (Rom. 14:16).

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Rom. 12:21).

Be alert. Yes. Don’t be naïve. Certainly not. But, by the same token, don’t be tempted to attribute evil motives to every good thing because there are those who have broken trust. Isaiah tells us what we should trust, But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread (Isaiah 8:13). If I may be so cute, we may conclude that while bad news sells; good news thrills! I’ll take the latter. How about you?

Feasting in a Fast-Food World*

There is little that we can point to in our lives as deserving anything but God's wrath. Our best moments have been mostly grotesque parodies. Our best loves have been almost always blurred with selfishness and deceit. But there is something to which we can point. Not anything that we ever did or were, but something that was done for us by another. Not our own lives, but the life of one who died in our behalf and yet is still alive. This is our only glory and our only hope. And the sound that it makes is the sound of excitement and gladness and laughter that floats through the night air from a great banquet.

--Frederick Buechner, Magnificent Defeat

Have we not been summoned by our Lord Jesus to let him into the church's banquet room so that He and we might enjoy one another? The invitation is to the Church: ". . . If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me" (Rev. 3:20). Jesus has not bid us assemble in front of a white board or Powerpoint, but around the dinner table. There's a place for learning, for classes. But the place of choice is dining, entering into his Presence. The place of studies will come and, in light of such dining, be that much more enhanced. Oh, to relish such opportunities!

*Title and quotation thanks to Michael Horton, "Reformation Today" (July/August 2009).

Are We Really Living While We're Living?

Heart pumping and lungs pulsating is only one definition of life, a very plastic and ambiguous one at that! Many (most?) fail to truly enjoy living. Eugene Peterson in Run with the Horses, quotes the Czech philosopher and martyr Vitezslav Gardovsky (1978), writing in God Is Not Yet Dead that "the terrible threat against life is not death or pain, nor any variation on the disasters that we so obsessively try to protect ourselves against with our social systems and personal stratagems. The terrible threat is 'that we might die earlier than we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years.'"

How Do We Fight This?

Peterson says,

We live in a society that tries to diminish us to the level of the antheap so that we scurry mindlessly, getting and consuming. It is essential to take counteraction (emphasis mine). . . The only way that any one of us can live at our best is in a life of radical faith in God. Every one of us needs to be stretched to live at our best, awakened out of dull moral habits, shaken out of petty and trivial busy-work.

An Example in Jeremiah

According to Peterson, what God did in enlisting the prophet Jeremiah, he does with us as well.

I called you to live at your best, to pursue righteousness, to sustain a drive toward excellence. It is easier, I know, to be neurotic. It is easier to be parasitic. It is easier to relax in the embracing arms of the The Average. Easier, but not better. Easier, but not more significant. Easier, but not more fulfilling. I called you to a life of purpose far beyond what you think yourself capable of living and promised you adequate strength to fulfill your destiny.

Don't Quit NOW!

God, as it were, continues with Jeremiah, "Now at the first sign of difficulty you are ready to quit. If you are fatigued by this run-of-the-mill crowd of apathetic mediocrities, what will you do when the real race starts, the race with the swift and determined horses of excellence? What is it you really want, Jeremiah, do you want to shuffle along with this crowd, or run with the horses?"

As a Christian, I hear you Peterson. As a Pastor, I really hear you! When we arrive at the end of the book, we look back over the long prophecy of Jeremiah and have to conclude, "He ran with the horses!" Find the quest, embrace the hope. Shall we not join him?

Why Are We Such a Bored People?

If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? Jeremiah 12:5

"The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly." This is how Eugene Peterson opens his wonderfully enlightening book, "Run With The Horses: The Quest for Life at Its Best." He quotes Tom Howard:

"Modern man is a bleak business. To our chagrin we discover that the declaration of autonomy has issued not in a race of free, masterly men, but rather in a race that can be described by its poets and dramatists only as a bored, vexed, frantic, embittered, and sniffling" (Chance or Dance, p. 104).

Peterson points out that this is true and has caused many in our culture to perform all manner of evil just to get attention--even if bad attention! Now, that's living a trivial, non-sensical life. I myself have heard actors/actresses say that they tire of "good" roles, preferring instead the wicked person because they are more interesting! That must be true in our culture. Newspapers know that good news does not sell. And you certainly don't see, as Peterson says, good people becoming the focus of TV specials. "No Oscars are given for integrity. At year's end no one compiles a list of the ten best-lived lives." OUCH!

SCRIPTURE MAY SURPRISE US

"One of the first things that strikes us about the men and women in Scripture is that they were disappointingly nonheroic. We do not find splendid moral examples. We do not find impeccably virtuous models. That always comes as a shock to newcomers to Scripture: Abraham lied; Jacob cheated; Moses murdered and complained; David committed adultery; Peter blasphemed."

MAYBE WE SHOULDN'T LOOK FOR HEROES

We read on and begin to suspect intention: a consistent strategy to demonstrate that the great, significant figures in the life of faith were fashioned from the same clay as the rest of us. We find the Scripture is sparing in the information that it gives on people while it is lavish in what it tells us about God. It refuses to feed our lust for hero worship. It will not pander to our adolescent desire to join a fan club. The reason is, I think, clear enough. Fan clubs encourage secondhand living. Through pictures and memorabilia, autographs and tourist visits, we associate with someone whose life is (we think) more exciting and glamorous than our own. We find diversion from our own humdrum existence by riding on the coattails of someone exotic.

LIVE ZESTFULLY!

We counter this mind-numbing humdrum of an existence "by plunging into a life of faith, participating in what God initiates in each life, exploring what God is doing in each event. The persons we meet on the pages of Scripture are remarkable for the intensity with which they live Godwards, the thoroughness in which all the details of their lives are included in God's word to them, in God's action in them." And here, Peterson makes a solid observation: "It is these persons, who are conscious of participating in what God is saying and doing, who are most human, most alive." Indeed. So, let us "run with the horses" . . . by faith!

WE SIN BECAUSE WE THINK TOO small!

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

--C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Ineptness in the Pulpit, Not Length, Creates Yawns in the Pew!

That's right. I just heard Dr. Timothy Dwyer, Associate Professor of Bible and Ministry from Northeastern Seminary in Rochester say as much. I believe that he is right. People will stay with you IF you have something worthwhile to say. For the last two decades I have heard repeated that 20-somethings are leaving the superficial, frothy, glitzy kinds of churches to find ones that actually say something profound. They want MORE, in other words. The problems mankind faces demand answers they've not been receiving. Well, to return to Why Johnny Can't Preach from the last two posts, let me quote T. David Gordon's take on preaching that makes a difference. See what you think . . .

What would make a difference would be Christian proclamation that is consequential, that is concerned less with current events than with the history-encompassing events of creation, fall, and redemption. What would makes a difference would be Christian proclamation that did not panic every time a court rendered a decision on some pet geopolitical concern, but called our attention instead to the certain judgment of God, with whom we have to do. What would make a difference would be Christian proclamation that was less concerned with "how-to" and more concerned with "why-to," why humans are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God. What might make a difference would be Christian proclamation that was less concerned with the latest news from the Beltway, and more concerned with the stunning and perennial good news that God in Christ is reconciling sinners to himself. But any one of these preferred alternatives requires a sensibility for the significant; a capacity to distinguish the weighty from the light, and the consequential from the trivial. [emphases mine]

Gordon is not arguing that there isn't a place for some of these things, but he IS arguing that comparatively, God's truth trumps all else. And where else must that truth be broadcast more than in the Christian pulpit? That is a legitimate concern.