As I pulled into the parking lot of my fraternity house last night and navigated my car through the typical minefield of broken beer bottles and crowds around fraternity row, I was smothered by sensory overload. The house next to ours was having a gigantic party in their backyard with strobe lights and speakers so loud; they rattled the very rims on my Honda. If this had taken place just a year ago, I would’ve quickly and embarrassedly slipped into my house, wrought with the lack of “fun” I was allowed to have as a Christian, all the while feeding my insecurity by convincing myself that a tame Christian life would somehow be worth it in the end.
Before I became a Christian, one of my most basic turnoffs to Christianity was the idea that engaging in a relationship with God meant sacrificing a potentially adventurous life for a quiet, almost lame, life of servitude. I went to one Young Life meeting in high school while I was still an atheist (I didn’t know Young Life was a Christian group until I got there), and though the people there were friendly and selfless, we essentially played children’s games the entire time. Children’s games are fun when you’re six or when you’re playing them with younger siblings but it was almost painfully awkward with an older group of people. Maybe playing charades is your cup of tea, but it just wasn’t getting the job done for me.
I don’t think I’m the only person who’s ever stereotyped Christians in this way. In the movie How Do You Know, Owen Wilson’s character notices Reese Witherspoon isn’t enjoying his wild party so he tells her she can “sit with the Christian athletes in the other room.” Even the media is cognizant of the stereotype that to live a Christian life is to nervously retreat from wild adventure to lame security.
What I’ve realized over the course of this past year, however, is that this stereotype couldn’t be further from the truth. The Christian life is often a life of thrilling, reckless, and dangerous adventure. This is not to say that one must seek a wild adventure to be called a Christian (for that, in fact, would be idolatry), but it is to say that when one sets his or her heart to feverishly seeking to both know Jesus Christ and to make Him known, his or her life will more often than not be soaked in thrill and adventure.
To understand how this desire for adventure is fulfilled, however, we must start with the basics of the flawed theology that was at the root of my misconceptions of the Christian life. When God made human beings in Genesis 3, as the signature feature of His creation, He made us in His image. Because we were made in God’s image, we originally shared His desires, characteristics, and passions. Theoretically, we could love unconditionally, love free of lusting, give selflessly, fear God perfectly, communicate with God clearly, and live eternally. When God created us, he was “very happy”. This perfect life and perfect nature, of course, ended (for the time being), when Adam sinned.
We recognize that humans are flawed in very many ways, but we forget that this didn’t happen until Genesis 3! Our desires, when distilled to their most basic form, are good, but the way we fulfill them is sinful and displeasing to God. When we look at almost any example from daily life, we see this is the case.
The desire for sex, for example, is not a sinful desire. Read Song of Songs and you’ll see God gave human beings sex not just for reproduction, but for enjoyment. Song of Songs is definitely one X-rated book. The sinful desire for sex occurs not when we desire sex itself, but when we desire it outside of its designed context, namely within the confines of heterosexual marriage. God, as our creator, has actually hardwired us to enjoy it most in this way! He is not, contrary to the opinion of some, creating a bunch of unnecessary red tape to see if we’re worthy of heaven (He already knows we’re not and his son is).
The desire to eat is not a sinful desire. It is only a sinful desire when the desire to eat becomes gluttony. The desire for success is not a sinful desire. It is only when that desire produces such pride and arrogance that it is displeasing to God. Money is not inherently evil. Money is only evil when it becomes an idol and when it is used for purposes other than loving God and loving God’s people. Sleep and rest are not evil (the Israelites were commanded to take an entire year off of work every seven years), but when sleep and rest are used constantly in the context of laziness, they are.
When we enjoy the gifts of God in his context, we will enjoy them most. God is not getting in the way of our utmost enjoyment, we are. C.S. Lewis put it perfectly when he said, “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 a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Dr. John Piper says, “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him”, and this idea makes complete sense. If I have a girlfriend for example, and I grudgingly do nice things for her because I feel as if it’s “just the right thing to do”, my girlfriend will not be glorified in the slightest. In fact, my friends will likely look upon the manner in which I do these things from her and come to the conclusion that her love for me is small, her sway over me is limited, and my intrigue for her has long since grown dull. If I, on the other hand, find legitimate pleasure in lavishly treating her well (out of my own desire to do so), she looks great in the eyes of my friends. Glory and enjoyment must work hand in hand. The Apostle Paul even “rejoiced in his sufferings”!
Our desires do not need to be curbed; rather they need to be intensified. The reason why I decided to pass on the “wild” prospect of dancing drunkenly on a table in Panama City beach this spring break is not because I was stoically sacrificing thrill for God, but because I had the intuition that true thrill and true adventure is found in being a Christ follower. I want to be a real wrangler, not a counterfeit cowboy.
Outside of Paul’s epistles, the Bible reads much like an Indiana Jones movie. David battled and defeated mighty armies, men raced and competed, people wore disguises, Christ-followers cast out demons, Job humiliated Satan, the disciples traveled the Mediterranean until they were martyred, and Jesus Christ flipped over tables in the temple complex.
The Christians nowadays that are most involved in actively accomplishing the Great Commission can’t seem to avoid the thrill of adventure either. Every day, Christians around the world fly deep into the jungles of South America and the Pacific, uproot their families to learn new languages, and smuggle Bibles into underground (literally, underground) churches to pray by candlelight. One World Race participant’s blog warned her supporters that because she’d be in “C” (China) for the next month, they shouldn’t write on her Facebook wall or comment on her blog, lest their words appear on government screenings.
In the last 18 months since I became a Christian, I’ve quit my sport, packed a bag to Wyoming, drove cattle out of a ranch while riding a full-speed horse, climbed a mountain in the Tetons without ropes, preached in situations well beyond my qualifications, held a Honduran child in the mountains of Central America, taken massive financial risks, shared the Gospel in dirt-floored village, and signed up to trek around almost the entire earth for the glory of God. I didn’t seek these thrills, but I sought Christ and these thrills were a side-effect.
Granted, the Christian life is not always thrilling. There is definitely a buckling-down that is required to pour over the scriptures, train oneself in righteousness, and look past the trifles of worldly life. This discipline, however, is couched in a life of adventure, more times than not.
People who waste their life partying in college and living a lifestyle that looks “rebellious” to the world are, pardon me if I’m upfront, mere conformists. You’ll often hear people talk of their “rebellious stages” of life when they “partied hard.” Really? Rebellious? Everybody’s doing it! I love when the rapper Lecrae says “If everybody’s doing it, it’s no longer rebellion!” I don’t mean to comdemn those who engage in this lifestyle (because we all have our various struggles), but I do mean to condemn the notion that this lifestyle is wild. No, it is tame, and it has been done many times before. .
To be fair, not everybody is called to dangerous and thrilling world missions. However, there is something about the statement “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit” that smells oddly like world missions and there is something about the climate of the times that makes being a true, unapologetic disciple of Jesus Christ a dangerous, yet thrilling task. As a Christian, I will not extinguish my burning masculine desire for adventure. Rather, I will douse it in gasoline by seeking Jesus Christ.
Before I became a Christian, one of my most basic turnoffs to Christianity was the idea that engaging in a relationship with God meant sacrificing a potentially adventurous life for a quiet, almost lame, life of servitude. I went to one Young Life meeting in high school while I was still an atheist (I didn’t know Young Life was a Christian group until I got there), and though the people there were friendly and selfless, we essentially played children’s games the entire time. Children’s games are fun when you’re six or when you’re playing them with younger siblings but it was almost painfully awkward with an older group of people. Maybe playing charades is your cup of tea, but it just wasn’t getting the job done for me.
I don’t think I’m the only person who’s ever stereotyped Christians in this way. In the movie How Do You Know, Owen Wilson’s character notices Reese Witherspoon isn’t enjoying his wild party so he tells her she can “sit with the Christian athletes in the other room.” Even the media is cognizant of the stereotype that to live a Christian life is to nervously retreat from wild adventure to lame security.
What I’ve realized over the course of this past year, however, is that this stereotype couldn’t be further from the truth. The Christian life is often a life of thrilling, reckless, and dangerous adventure. This is not to say that one must seek a wild adventure to be called a Christian (for that, in fact, would be idolatry), but it is to say that when one sets his or her heart to feverishly seeking to both know Jesus Christ and to make Him known, his or her life will more often than not be soaked in thrill and adventure.
To understand how this desire for adventure is fulfilled, however, we must start with the basics of the flawed theology that was at the root of my misconceptions of the Christian life. When God made human beings in Genesis 3, as the signature feature of His creation, He made us in His image. Because we were made in God’s image, we originally shared His desires, characteristics, and passions. Theoretically, we could love unconditionally, love free of lusting, give selflessly, fear God perfectly, communicate with God clearly, and live eternally. When God created us, he was “very happy”. This perfect life and perfect nature, of course, ended (for the time being), when Adam sinned.
We recognize that humans are flawed in very many ways, but we forget that this didn’t happen until Genesis 3! Our desires, when distilled to their most basic form, are good, but the way we fulfill them is sinful and displeasing to God. When we look at almost any example from daily life, we see this is the case.
The desire for sex, for example, is not a sinful desire. Read Song of Songs and you’ll see God gave human beings sex not just for reproduction, but for enjoyment. Song of Songs is definitely one X-rated book. The sinful desire for sex occurs not when we desire sex itself, but when we desire it outside of its designed context, namely within the confines of heterosexual marriage. God, as our creator, has actually hardwired us to enjoy it most in this way! He is not, contrary to the opinion of some, creating a bunch of unnecessary red tape to see if we’re worthy of heaven (He already knows we’re not and his son is).
The desire to eat is not a sinful desire. It is only a sinful desire when the desire to eat becomes gluttony. The desire for success is not a sinful desire. It is only when that desire produces such pride and arrogance that it is displeasing to God. Money is not inherently evil. Money is only evil when it becomes an idol and when it is used for purposes other than loving God and loving God’s people. Sleep and rest are not evil (the Israelites were commanded to take an entire year off of work every seven years), but when sleep and rest are used constantly in the context of laziness, they are.
When we enjoy the gifts of God in his context, we will enjoy them most. God is not getting in the way of our utmost enjoyment, we are. C.S. Lewis put it perfectly when he said, “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 a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Dr. John Piper says, “God is most glorified when we are most satisfied in Him”, and this idea makes complete sense. If I have a girlfriend for example, and I grudgingly do nice things for her because I feel as if it’s “just the right thing to do”, my girlfriend will not be glorified in the slightest. In fact, my friends will likely look upon the manner in which I do these things from her and come to the conclusion that her love for me is small, her sway over me is limited, and my intrigue for her has long since grown dull. If I, on the other hand, find legitimate pleasure in lavishly treating her well (out of my own desire to do so), she looks great in the eyes of my friends. Glory and enjoyment must work hand in hand. The Apostle Paul even “rejoiced in his sufferings”!
Our desires do not need to be curbed; rather they need to be intensified. The reason why I decided to pass on the “wild” prospect of dancing drunkenly on a table in Panama City beach this spring break is not because I was stoically sacrificing thrill for God, but because I had the intuition that true thrill and true adventure is found in being a Christ follower. I want to be a real wrangler, not a counterfeit cowboy.
Outside of Paul’s epistles, the Bible reads much like an Indiana Jones movie. David battled and defeated mighty armies, men raced and competed, people wore disguises, Christ-followers cast out demons, Job humiliated Satan, the disciples traveled the Mediterranean until they were martyred, and Jesus Christ flipped over tables in the temple complex.
The Christians nowadays that are most involved in actively accomplishing the Great Commission can’t seem to avoid the thrill of adventure either. Every day, Christians around the world fly deep into the jungles of South America and the Pacific, uproot their families to learn new languages, and smuggle Bibles into underground (literally, underground) churches to pray by candlelight. One World Race participant’s blog warned her supporters that because she’d be in “C” (China) for the next month, they shouldn’t write on her Facebook wall or comment on her blog, lest their words appear on government screenings.
In the last 18 months since I became a Christian, I’ve quit my sport, packed a bag to Wyoming, drove cattle out of a ranch while riding a full-speed horse, climbed a mountain in the Tetons without ropes, preached in situations well beyond my qualifications, held a Honduran child in the mountains of Central America, taken massive financial risks, shared the Gospel in dirt-floored village, and signed up to trek around almost the entire earth for the glory of God. I didn’t seek these thrills, but I sought Christ and these thrills were a side-effect.
Granted, the Christian life is not always thrilling. There is definitely a buckling-down that is required to pour over the scriptures, train oneself in righteousness, and look past the trifles of worldly life. This discipline, however, is couched in a life of adventure, more times than not.
People who waste their life partying in college and living a lifestyle that looks “rebellious” to the world are, pardon me if I’m upfront, mere conformists. You’ll often hear people talk of their “rebellious stages” of life when they “partied hard.” Really? Rebellious? Everybody’s doing it! I love when the rapper Lecrae says “If everybody’s doing it, it’s no longer rebellion!” I don’t mean to comdemn those who engage in this lifestyle (because we all have our various struggles), but I do mean to condemn the notion that this lifestyle is wild. No, it is tame, and it has been done many times before. .
To be fair, not everybody is called to dangerous and thrilling world missions. However, there is something about the statement “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit” that smells oddly like world missions and there is something about the climate of the times that makes being a true, unapologetic disciple of Jesus Christ a dangerous, yet thrilling task. As a Christian, I will not extinguish my burning masculine desire for adventure. Rather, I will douse it in gasoline by seeking Jesus Christ.
