Last month I read the book Radical, Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream, by David Platt, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Never have I read a book that has made me think so much about my life, and about the life Jesus wants for me. Here’s some of my favorite excerpts from the book I want to share with you, and I encourage you all to read the full book!
Ultimately, Jesus was calling the disciples to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation. In a world that prizes promoting oneself, they were following a teacher who told them to crucify themselves.
At first as I read lines like this in the book, about the importance of giving up everything we have to follow after Christ, my thought was “Check. Isn’t that what I’m doing?” But the more I thought about it, I realized just how much I’m only looking at this way of life as an 11 month commitment. This is something I can check off my list, consider myself good with God, and return to a life of comfort living the American dream. Right?
We have started to redefine Christianity. We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. A nice, middle-class, American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who could not expect us to forsake our closest relationships so that he receives all our affection. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion so that it does not infringe on our comforts, because, after all, he loves us just the way we are. A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes. A Jesus who brings us comfort and prosperity as we live out our Christian spin on the American dream.
I hate to admit how nice this version of Jesus sounds. I’m only in month three and I already daydream about returning to a simpler life in the States come November. Find a job, attend a good church, get married, buy a nice house, have kids, the whole nine yards.
While Christians choose to spend their life fulfilling the American dream instead of giving their lives to proclaim the kingdom of God, literally billions in need of the gospel remain in the dark. American Christians need to wake up and realize there are infinitely more important things in your life than football and a 401(k). There are real battles to be fought, so different from the superficial “battles” we focus on. The purpose of life is deeper than having a nice job, raising a nice family, living a comfortable life and tacking church attendance onto the end of it.
Thanks for the major conviction, God. That’s everything I just said I wanted.
Good intentions, regular worship, and even study of the Bible do not prevent blindness in me. Part of our sinful nature instinctively chooses to see what we want to see and what we want to ignore. I can live my own Christian life while unknowingly overlooking evil. There are 4.5 billion people in the world today without Christ. More than a billion of them have never heard the gospel.
Thousands of children around the world die everyday because they go without food and clean water. Orphans are easier to ignore before you know their names. It’s easier to pretend that they’re not real before you hold them in your arms.
My prayer for the remainder of my race is that my eyes continue to be opened to the poor, the lost, the broken and the unloved. That I begin to see my entire life calling to be to spread the gospel, not just for the next eight months. That going home to my car and my closet and all my luxuries won’t seem quite as appealing anymore.
The war against materialism in our hearts is exactly that: a war. It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, to live more comfortably. But where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
I don’t know about you, but I want my treasure, and my heart, to be with Jesus.
