"The reward of the American Dream is safety, security, and success found in more comfort, better stuff, and greater prosperity. But the reward of Christ trumps all these things and beckons us to live for eternal safety, security and satisfaction that far outwiegh everything this world has offer us."
radical: [rad'-i-kuhl], adjective
from the Latin word "radix", meaning "root"
1) markedly different from the usual, customary, or traditional.
2) favoring extreme changes in existing traditional or accepted forms, views, habits, conditions, or institutions.
We see this term used all of the time in politics, economics, and business. Those on the right use it to describe those on the left and vice versa in a neverending shower of mud. We also see it, with a much less demeaning connotation, in the world of technology. Many inventions that have changed and improved the way that we live, such as the personal computer (although sometimes it seems to make things much worse courtesy of viruses, spyware, the blue screen of death, etc), were once thought to be too extreme, expensive or simply impossible to complete. Of all of the ideas that have been put forth in human history, nothing has changed the world quite like democracy, the idea that people could and should govern themselves. In 1776 one nation decided that it would embrace this standard. What began as an experiment that the world thought was doomed to fail has become the greatest superpower in history. The same can be said of the church. Ordained and directed by Jesus himself and composed of a group of scattered and scared nobodies, the church has become the most influencial religious body of all time in spite of a history, both past and present, of persecution. Yet somehow that history has been lost to the modern American Christian. Perhaps it's our constitution's clause assuring the free practice of religion. Perhaps it's our growing desire for isolation and individualism. Platt seems to suggest that it's something else entirely, apathy. Not only apathy towards those around us but also towards the life of Christ, the truth of the Gospel and the consequences thereof. When it comes to these core tenants we either "look God in the face and say, 'no'" or take the even easier route and ignore him completely but either way in doing so we decide that our agenda is more important than his and turn a deaf ear to his commandments while many people locally and all over the world die having never had a chance to hear the Gospel. Over the weekend we commemorated the fact that "when God chose to bring salvation to you and me, he did not send gold or silver, cash or check. He sent himself – the Son." Jesus gave up everything for us as a demonstration of what the Gospel is really all about. If we are truly his followers shouldn't we be willing do the same for him? Shouldn't we be willing to be radical?
I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason so, naturally, I don't find it to be a coincidence that my men's Bible study group concluded 9 of the hardest chapters that many of us had ever commited to read during the Passion Week or that I am writing and posting these words the day after Easter or that we began reading this book 6 months before I am to leave my own American Dream behind and travel across the ocean to people I've never met and live in conditions I've never experienced first hand using money that I'm hoping and praying will come from supporters that I or may not ever meet. You see, the Gospel itself is radical. Christmas is radical. Good Friday is radical. Easter is radical. Their messsage "is not 'God loves me, period' as if we were the object our own faith. The message…is 'God loves me so that I might make him – his ways, his salvation, his glory and his greatness – known among all nations.'" The world is dying to see something totally different than what have given them. They want something authentic, let's give it to them.
