Recently I have been thinking a lot about what it means to follow Jesus. What does it really look like when someone is following Jesus? How is their day-to-day existence different? It is concerning to me, that when I hear sermons, sing songs, read books, write blogs, have conversations about really ‘giving all to follow Jesus’ it doesn’t translate in to real life changes.
Mainly, what I feel is that so much of the call to ‘leave everything behind and follow Jesus’ becomes a call to work harder on things that a lot of people already do. To be ‘all in’, ‘to sell all your possessions to follow Jesus’ comes across as a call to commit to a more disciplined life. Reading your Bible more, praying more, and serving at church meetings more. It also comes with a call to witness in your workplace, in your school, or wherever you might be.
Now, I don’t want to discredit personal devotion, life-giving habits like reading the bible, praying and fasting, etc. Nor do I want to say that being a witness to the Kingdom even in our workplaces and our schools is not important. All of these practices are involved in the pursuit of Jesus Christ. That being said, I also wonder how much of these things really challenge us to live differently. How will this radical call to follow Jesus affect what I do day-to-day? How will this radical call to be the people of God actually affect what we (the church) do day-to-day? What does it really look like?
The call to ‘give everything up to follow Jesus’ calls for a radical change in how we live our lives. Yet I feel that the out working becomes confusing. What actually ends up changing is not as drastic as it all sounded during the sermon Sunday morning or the mid-week bible study. The out working becomes more of a renewed commitment to things already being done rather than a change and a learning of a new way of life. This leaves me questioning what all this talk of ‘following Jesus with everything I have’ really means.
I read a book a few months ago called ‘The End of Evangelicalism?’ by pastor and professor David Fitch. In it he explains how making the ‘decision for Christ’ has become a nebulous concept for evangelicals in America. At the same time it has become a distinguishing element of Christian living, in a sense, it has become the linchpin that holds together the activities, programs, and educational efforts of the church.
He says that ” ‘the decision’ assumes salvation is individual, begun through a voluntary act, and then nurtured through individually acquired learning and worship” (Fitch 2010: 79). The church’s focus then is to give these individuals the materials necessary for the growth of these individuals.
“Large groups of people come to these settings anonymously as individuals and receive the ‘materials’ they need to grow. They receive the good and services necessary to lead individual Christian lives. It all makes sense because of the backdrop of ‘the decision’ ” (2010: 79).
The issue for Fitch is that ‘the decision’ has become a very prominent aspect of the church’s life together while at the same time it has become very unclear what it actually requires of the one who decides to believe in Jesus. He says “the ‘decision’ has coalesced a large group of evangelical people around it, but fewer and fewer of them really know what it might mean for their concrete lives” (2010: 81). The decision to believe in Jesus Christ as ones personal saviour and enter into a personal relationship with God has “become set off and separated from one’s embodied existence” (2010: 88).
I feel like this is the same tension I felt when I heard another sermon about really giving up everything to follow Jesus. I wanted that, I felt my heart yearn for such a life. But after the service, I sat in my chair wondering what I really had to do now that I had made this decision to follow Jesus with ‘my whole heart’.
The book of James talks about the supposed dichotomy of faith and works. How can you have faith if you don’t do anything? How can you say you believe in Jesus, that you are saved, when you do not really do anything different? He says in chapter one:
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”
I don’t have any answers to these questions. I am still not sure what it will look like to ‘do the word’. But I feel like I keep looking at my face in the mirror and forgetting what I look like.
I think it will involve changes for the church and our life together. It might mean that we need to actually live differently, eat differently, drink differently, and work differently. It might mean that some literal and concrete things that we do in this life will have to change. It might mean giving up on the literal and concrete lives we pursue with the rest of America. It could mean that your job needs to change, it could mean that your habits, routines, pleasures, and joys need to change. I don’t know. What seems clear though, is that Jesus calls us to follow him and that necessitates literal and actual following him as a living God.
This call, as Bonhoeffer says in ‘Cost of Discipleship’, is the grace that we receive from him.
“Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life” (1995: 45).
1. Fitch, D.E., “The End of Evangelicalism?”, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2011
2. Bonhoeffer, D., “The Cost of Discipleship”, New York: Touchstone, 1995.
Continued Inklings 