Comfortable Christianity

Recently on Facebook, I have seen a trend of "unpopular opinions" where users say their unpopular opinion about current events.

While I have never been deterred from sharing my generally unpopular opinions about life from the perspective of a Christian in a world that spits in the face of everything I believe, the task is more challenging when I feel I am voicing an "unpopular opinion" amidst believers.

So with that being said, I will tread lightly, but I will not compromise truth.

There is a concept I have been struggling with lately and it's this idea that Christianity is a tool for making life more comfortable. Basically, Christianity is the guide to show us how to live, act, speak, and behave so that our lives become easier and better. The more I thought about this concept, the more wrong it seemed to me.

Let me explain.

Christianity and scripture have been loving bestowed on the undeserving Gentiles who were not worthy of being counted as part of the inheritance of Christ. When anyone confesses their sins and surrenders control of their lives to Christ, their life (should) radically change. The old will pass away and they will become a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Scripture, the life-breathed word of God, is a tool given to believers to show and guide how they should live. But there is a fine line between seeing Christianity as the purpose and motivation for your life and seeing Christianity as a way to make your life more comfortable and easy.

Christianity was never intended to make followers comfortable. The lives of Christians are not supposed to be easy. And yet, all too often, I think we see the gospel as a message that promises the perfect, comfortable, easy life--and this misconception is detrimental to the true message the Gospel speaks.

I hear these messages perpetuated through speaking, online and even within the church. Messages like "God only wants you to be happy" and these messages are derived from verses that have been taken out of context and manipulated to fit our own selfishness. For example, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4).

Believers and unbelievers alike misunderstand this verse as a promise that if you keep up good behavior doing all your good Christian deeds, then God will reward you with a big house, fancy cars, money and that person you want to be with. No? Aren't those things your heart desires?

But that's the point. If you are truly delighting yourself in the Lord, your desires will be for him. Your desires will be to see his name be made great, not your own. Your desires will not be to accumulate possessions for this world but to surrender everything to be used how he sees fit.

Prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen have taken verses like this and manipulated them into an entirely different religion--a religion of self. Osteen preaches that by following God, you will become rich, famous, and beautiful.

Osteen writes that "God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny he has laid out for us" (Osteen 1).

The Gospel then becomes about self instead of about Christ. It becomes about putting on a show, being lukewarm about growth, and not being willing to do the challenging things that are required to follow Christ.

Is it really that big of a deal if we want to see Christianity as comfortable and easy? What is really at stake? Am I just being intolerable?

John Piper, author of Let the Nations be Glad!, writes that "comfort and ease and affluence and prosperity and safety and freedom often cause and tremendous inertia in the church. The very things we think would produce personnel, energy, and creative investment of time and money for the missionary cause instead produce the exact opposite: weakness, apathy, lethargy, self-centeredness, preoccupation with security" (Piper 117).

The more comfort we have the more complacent we become. How much more comfortable can you become than those who live in the United States?

I heard recently that this concept of comfortable Christianity is something almost exclusively understood in America. What this means is that Christians in every other part of the world are being persecuted, killed, and ostracized for their faith, while we see it as a socially polite claim to make.

Christianity in the United States becomes more about comfort and security of our families and churches and schools and less about how much we can sacrifice for Christ. We are less willing to "surrender all" to Christ when we have never known anything but extreme comfort.

The song "All to Jesus, I surrender" is the kind of attitude we should have with everything we own--even with our very lives. Yet we sing those words without an inkling of what that might actually look like in our own life.

What do we lose from the power of the Gospel when we don't have to own it?

Everything. I would argue we lose everything. The entire gospel is centered on that of abandon, surrender, sacrifice, and persecution.

When Jesus first called the disciples, he asked them to leave everything behind. The disciples, now so well known, were once simple fishermen who used their trade to feed their families and pay their taxes. Yet, when Jesus called them, "they pulled their boats up to shore, left everything and followed him" (Luke 5:11).

They left their source of income. They left something they had invested so much time, money, and work on. They left their families and the comfort of anything familiar they had once known.

Later on, Jesus encounters two men whom he asks to follow him. The first man responded to the call by saying he had to bury his father first. The second said he just needed to say goodbye to his family.

The Lord responded by saying that "no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God" (Luke 10:62).

So how does this verse compare to the reasoning that God just wants us to be happy, comfortable and worry free? The Lord asked the men to follow him and both men responded with what we would consider reasonable requests, however, the Lord has called us here on earth to be servants for his purposes, not to idolize family.

And I think that is what is the most disconcerting to me. Yes, we are called to serve in the best capacity we can in whatever station the Lord has called us to, whether that is being a mother, father, sister, brother, teacher, student, etc. I am not belittling that calling.

What I am doing is putting that calling in perspective to the calling to serve Christ. Because we all know which calling is more important, more pressing, and more meaningful in the light of eternity, however, I think we often act as though the family, the job, and the education are more important.

Yes, they are important. No, they are not more important than the call to serve Christ. If you still don't believe me just go back and re-read how Christ responded to the two men.

Piper writes that "Jesus suffered first in a way that we cannot: 'to sanctify the people through his blood.' The death of the son of God is absolutely unique in its effect. But then notice the word 'therefore.' Because Jesus died for us in this way, therefore let us go forth with him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. It does not say, since he suffered for us, therefore can have an easy life free from suffering and abuse and danger. Just the opposite. Jesus' suffering is the basis of our going with him and bearing the same abuse he bore" (Piper 102).

Christianity is a loud proclamation that we stand with the man who suffered for the entire human race, and therefore we will dedicate our whole lives to him and suffer like he did because we are associating ourselves with him.

Suffering is not something we intentionally seek after, but inevitably comes when we live the way Christ commands. Our suffering in the states does not even come close to equating to what others suffer across oceans, however, it is concerning when believers say they have never suffered or experienced persecution for what they believe.

Persecution will come; it's inevitable. However, there has been a surge of so-called Christianity that seeks to apologize for anything that might be offensive to unbelievers. Truth is compromised in order to make Christianity more socially acceptable.

Christianity is offensive to unbelievers. Period. Absolute truth is offensive in a culture that acts as if there is not a definite answer to anything. Therefore, to align with a belief system such as Christianity, people will find you narrow-minded, hateful, pretentious etc--even if you have never warranted any of those labels or stereotypes.

That's called persecution. That's called suffering for our faith. Take it in stride, my friends.

I do not seek to criminalize those with money or excess of possessions. The Lord does bless abundantly. However, I charge you not to store up your treasures here on earth, but to see everything you own and everyone you know as belonging to the Lord and willing to offer those things to him whenever he asks that of you.

It's so much easier to thank God for what he has given us than to rejoice when he asks us to give them back. Yet, if we see everything as belonging to him--for the glory of him--then this will make the sacrifice much easier.

About a year and a half ago, the Lord called me to missions. I felt the tug on my heart and I prayed and sought council for over a year--discerning whether it was me or the Lord who was the cause of this.

Recently I went to Africa; my first taste of what it might mean to be a missionary. I was only gone for just short of a month. However, I was able to spend many hours talking with a woman who has been a missionary for almost 30 years. She was transparent and honest with me about the struggles of being a missionary.

And for the first time, I saw what this call really meant--the glitter and sparkle were gone--and I was hit with the reality of the sacrifice and hardships I was signing up for.

I sat at the wooden picnic table breaking beans for dinner that night in the Bush and I remembered all the nights my family sat at the table in the summers breaking beans together. I started to cry and I realized that is what the Lord meant when he said "If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).

What he means here is not that we should hate them, but to love Christ so much that we are willing to turn our back on them and follow him.

And for the first time, I realized that my calling to be a missionary would mean sacrificing the time and company of my family. And despite my sadness, there was still great joy in my heart, because I knew what I was striving for would be much greater than anything I could have here on earth--yes, even my own life.

My prayer for all of you is to be able to honestly proclaim that "for me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).