THIS is an article that one of my teammates wrote….. I have never been so blown away by writing. I really relate to his story and his view of thinking because we both attended a “CHRISTIAN” university… By the end of this blog I hope most of you, if not all of you, will really get angry at how we have conformed to this watered down view of God and our idea of a Christian….and Thanks Scott Taylor for this amazing work… and the work you are doing for God’s Kingdom.
I wrote this article for Charles Peters, a friend from
Liberty and his new online magazine Heretic Press. This should be in
the July issue.
Oh how life has changed over the last year. A year ago I was
finishing up my junior year at Liberty University. I was starting the
process of searching for a graduate school where I could obtain a PhD in
applied mathematics. I was planning a research project in an open
field of mathematical physics for my final semester at Liberty starting
in August. I was saying goodbye to the guys I had mentored on my hall
through the school year as a Spiritual Life Director. I was planning a
summer of running in preparation for a fall season of ultramarathons. I
somehow managed to cram all of my stuff into the back of my Explorer
and began the 700 mile drive home from Lynchburg, VA to Battle Creek,
MI.
I spent the long drive home in solitude. While the setting
sun painted the blue ridge mountains orange and pink I drove in
silence. The silence was nauseating. As a proud member of the largest
mass of college aged evangelicals in the world, I was used to having my
thoughts and Christianity spoon-fed to me. Somewhere between the
mandatory chapel services three times a week, dress code, required
accountability, curfew, emotion driven altar calls, and “Liberty Way” I
had stopped thinking on my own. I became proficient at vomiting up the
orthodoxy and orthopraxy I had consumed in the required biblical world
view, theology, and evangelism classes. All of the fire and brimstone
evangelists and theologians had left me as a pile of skeleton bones. So
as I drove farther and farther from the epicenter of the lukewarm, I
heard the audible voice of God whisper, “Welcome back son, I’ve missed
you.” I pulled off the road and cried.
The summer passed quietly. Because of a thousand mile
relocation to Rogers, AR, I found myself sitting at home without a
ministry or job. In the solitude only found in a gated, upper-class
community God began to reopen my mind to His Word. Jesus didn’t die on
the cross so we could get the golden ticket into a country club. He
never gave us a four step prayer so that we could get into heaven and go
on crawling through life. I began to wonder, did anyone really believe
Jesus meant what he said? Or did we regard him as insane? Jesus spent
his few years of ministry turning water into wine to keep the party
going, flipping over tables in the temple, spitting in a mans eyes to
heal them, and pissing off the Pharisees. He didn’t seem to care too
much about the masses that followed from a distance but gave his
disciples the authority to heal the sick, raise the dead and cast our
demons. He spoke in parables, walked on water, and told us to do the
same. I found that His life and purpose were somehow missing from
everything that I had been taught.
About the same time I was discovering all of this, I stumbled
upon the website for the World Race. The World Race is an eleven month,
eleven country trip that is best described as the crazy child of a
missions trip and an epic pilgrimage. If Jesus was constantly
surrounded by a crowd, for the majority of my life I was one of the
faceless admirers. From the moment I started the application there
was no doubt in my mind that this is where I was supposed to be. God
had been clearly preparing my life and quietly opening and closing
doors. So on January 1st I met with 45 other twenty somethings to begin
this adventure. The majority of us had sold cars, quit jobs, dumped
boyfriends, and emptied bank accounts to get there. I managed to fit
all of my material possessions into a pack that now weighs less then
thirty pounds. We made our way through security, passed through the
gate and flew to the other side of the world, India.
Since then we’ve played with street kids in India, climbed high
into the Himalayan mountains in Nepal, taught English to gypsies in
Romania, planted a field of radish in Moldova, ate pizza in the
imaginary country of Transnistria and danced with AIDS orphans in
Swaziland. We’ve seen legs grow straight, demons cast out, boils
cleansed, and are still looking for a body to raise. We’ve climbed
mountains, swam in waterfalls, gone on a safari, rode elephants, and
witnessed to bartenders. On a regular basis we receive prophetic words
and visions, stand on furniture to make declarations and sharpen each
other while living in constant community. We do all of this while
breaking out of spiritual prisons, freeing ourselves of generational
iniquities and soul ties. And the best part is… it’s all becoming
normal. Something whispers inside that this is the way life is supposed
to be lived. I’m terrified of the possibility of crawling through life
only to arrive at death safely.
Somewhere through history, Christianity lost its flavor. We’ve
put Jesus behind a wall of bulletproof glass so we can watch Him but He
can’t touch us and we’re still trying to seal up the box we put the
Holy Spirit into. If Jesus lived today, I don’t think we’d find him in a
mega church. We probably regard him as a false prophet, maybe even
demonic. Similar to the Pharisees we’d probably get really angry when
He laughed at our justifications and got angry at our Starbucks in the
church entrance. It’s much more likely that we’d find him blowing
bubbles with the orphans of Swaziland or dancing with the untouchables
of the Hindu caste system. God is looking for a generation that will
stop wearing Christian tees, arguing over orthodoxy and abstaining from
the gifts He’s given us and live the indulgent life that He’s called us
to as heirs to His Kingdom. A generation that will abandon their
American dream and follow the Kingdom dream that God has for them. If
Jesus walked up to you today and said, “stop everything and follow me.”
How would you respond?
