Running into the fire

A big complaint about Christians is how we can get so focused on piety and religious perfection that we start to lose touch. Before you know it, we’ve locked ourselves in our home with walls adorned violently with Hobby Lobby posters and nationalistic talismans (an interesting dichotomy of decor, indeed: ‘Fuck Biden’ mixed with ‘Live, Laugh, Love’) as we marathon TBN, stockpile food and ammo, and send paper checks to televangelists. 

In other words, we start climbing a staircase to get to a false god who demands perfection, piety, and loyalty from us. 

What we’re dealing with here is the accusing voice that booms in our heads and hearts. It is the voice of the law, and it is incessant. But by attempting to climb the ladder of piety and perfection, we don’t realize that we’re actually doing an un-Christian thing. We’re making the accusing voice our god instead of Jesus, and we’re submitting to its incessant and utterly ridiculous demands. 

This accusing voice is propelling us skyward or heavenward. It drives us out of this world. And in response, we try to escape the earth and our neighbors in need. 

But you know what’s funny? It’s not just the TBN-watching conservative fundamentalist Christian patriarch who does this; who acts on their religious impulse to escape into some kind of spiritual utopia by waiting for Jesus to come back. No... It can also be the far-left activist who pushes for the perfect society and is driven by her ideals. She, too, hears the accusing voice and can just as easily try to escape the world in front of her. 

It cuts even deeper...

Because it’s also the suburban moderate dad who worships the God of someday-retirement; who escapes the life he has - the spouse and kids at home - to put in his endless hours at the office as he awaits his messianic 401k. 

No, I’m not saying that it’s just activists or conservative Christians or suburban dads who fall prey to this. WE ALL do.

The central question here is this:

Through what lens do we view our lives?

Is it a lens of law, legalism, and tribalistic loyalty? If so, we’re not looking through a Christian lens. We’re looking through a lens of law. If we’re Christians, we proclaim that God fulfilled the law in Jesus through the resurrection. It’s not up to us to fulfill the law. We can’t. And when we try, we turn into false gods who only muck things up.

The law can only bring us one place… To the grave. We cannot escape the law by trying to live the law. The law always ups the ante and accuses us. It kills us in the end.

But with Jesus, we are given his death in advance. When the accusing voice becomes too much, we can just stop and lay down on the cool grass. And in that moment, we can take Jesus’s death as our own. We can let the false/old self die while our human hearts continue to drum on. And (here’s the best part) we can accept Jesus’s resurrection to bring us to new life, right in the here and now.

(New life. Not ‘improved’ life.)

Following the law will never get us there. The law calls for continual improvement. Climb, climb, climb. Escape, escape, escape. Climb that ladder to utopia, whatever that looks like for you. 

(This is exactly what the devil wants. He makes ample use out of our so-called ‘goodness’.)

But as we’re running up our ladder to our personal utopia, God in Christ runs the other way. As we run up the staircase to our idol away from the burning building that is our real life, Christ passes us running down into it and invites us to “follow him.” He ends the accusing voice that propels us upward and as we follow him in faith deeper into our lives, we find true joy and wholeness. We find that heaven is right here.

The authentic Christian life is a path downward into our real, beautiful, and broken life, not an escape from it. 

In the forgiveness of Christ, the accusing voice ends. We have nothing to run from. Only our neighbors to run to, in love.