Gospel
I wrote the following as an exercise for a class I'm leading at church. We are exploring the gospel and the Gospels for the fundamental elements of Christ's message and meaning. As our study continues, we are writing "our own" gospels to discipline our personal message with the teachings of the Word. Here, I address my "gospel" to my American generation, generally middle-class, well-educated Gen X'ers and younger who long for meaning. Instead of cutting and pasting Ecclesiastes, I present the following for your comment and consideration:
Good News to Call Out My American Generation:
Twenty eight is the new eighteen. Why can’t you grow up? You’ve learned good lessons from the Boomers, from the frivolous ‘80s, from the nihilistic ‘90s, through the age of information and terror. You’ve learned so well what the world is not, but you have yet to realize what it is. You’ve learned what you don’t want to be, but you still flail about, grasping for a calling, digging around for something valuable in a world of cosmetic fluff. You long for self-actualization while being bombarded with ads, sex and debt.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Sure, you said, “I want a job where I can help people.” You said, “I don’t want to be a part of the machine.” You even said, “Money isn’t that important to me.” Then you got six credit cards in college to live like an adult with a job and to afford adventures and experiences that you hoped would invent yourself in a boring world.
You scorned others’ obsession with physical perfection, then sold your soul to be as attractive as possible to whomever you want to want you, to entice sensations that belie your feigned disinterest in celebrity bodies and style. You hide a cowering heart behind bold words of defiance and big dreams that outstrip your reality and talent.
You rail against political injustice. You cry out against the sins of your fathers. You wear pity and angst on your sleeve. You gripe about the status quo. Your bile rises at any hint of hypocrisy in the system. You complain, complain and complain yet do nothing but insulate yourself with artificial relationships, staged reality, simulated adventure and state of the art toys.
Despite your quick judgment on society’s ills, you wilt when called to serve, to sacrifice, to go without. You admire the good among us but will not surrender your inalienable right to happiness and lattes. You cry out against social injustice but drop billions each weekend for phony art and forgettable entertainment. You forgot your ambition to help people when you couldn’t make the lease payments on a ride your parents couldn’t afford. Then you ask them to finance your continuing search for self.
You are a sad failure. You are a hypocrite, and you have pimped your own life so that others will want your body. You know the right words but sell out your pure intentions when the cost of service might evict you from a nice place in a trendy neighborhood, when the cost of giving might make you miss a night of TV, when the cost of charity and hospitality will inconvenience your fun.
You neglect your true heart in case you might look weak. You are terrified of discomfort, but you are more terrified of what others will think if you are uncomfortable. You are not so scared of failing as having appeared to have failed. You are weak. You are tired. You are a fool. You are a coward. You’re scared to death that someone will find out that you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re afraid that your bluster is not enough. You are frightened of missing the inside joke. You sneak away from sacrifice and hardship, because you know that you’re not up to the task. You say God’s name but your only desperate prayer is that you won’t have to suffer.
You scrounge for validation because you are invalid. You cast about for meaning because you have none. You experiment for spirituality because you do not know who, or whose, you are. You scorn the system even though you are its tool. You cry out for peace, even though you give none. You demand respect because you have not earned it.
You have accepted the proposition that everything is false. You do not trust because you are not trustworthy. You are frail, so everyone else must be, too. You say, “Perception is reality,” as if you believe it, but you just hope it’s true. If the world is as you believe it to be, then surely you’re no worse than the rest, maybe even a little better. You put too much faith in your own point of view, especially when you know, deep down, that you have no credibility. You’re a cop-out whiner, but a little self-deception goes a long way.
You don’t need to be saved from persecution. You don’t need to be saved from poverty. You don’t need to be saved from war. You don’t need to be saved from the system. You don’t need to be saved from culture or pop culture. You don’t need to be saved from your broken home. You don’t need to be saved from the economy or a lagging job market. You’re out of excuses. You need to be saved from yourself.
Who will save you? You might be surprised. Nothing in this world will satisfy your needs, the emptiness that haunts you. You are an eternal creature in a temporal world. You are designed with a hole in your heart, a longing for fulfillment. Everything you want is in your spirit, not your body.
Your spirit is eternal but you insist on feeding it temporary nourishment. You feed the spirit with money that you will waste or spend or lose. You feed your spirit with electronics, cars, clothes, music, fads and trends that will be out of mode in half a year. You feed your spirit with adrenaline-pumping adventure or endorphin-spewing sports for a rush that provokes only greater cravings. You feed your eternal spirit with things that decay. You feed your spirit with any body you can coax into bed with you, those who use you as much as you use them, for gratification of your mortal body with no thought of contracting sexually transmitted depression. Your short-sighted lust corrodes your spirit. No wonder your heart cracks and wilts and cries out for meaning. The temporal will not satisfy the eternal.
Where may your eternal spirit find eternal nourishment? Only by engaging other eternal beings and thriving among the immortals. We have access to two eternal classes: God, in His own class, and our immortal selves. We are eternal spirits crying out, as deep calls to deep. We seek each other, even without knowing, because we long for the eternal to fill our hearts. God waits while we dance around each other, trying not to get hurt. You fear the vulnerability, the risk, the inconvenience and sacrifice of engaging other people, other eternal souls, yet this is your calling. Simply said, yet supremely difficult to live, you must love. Love surrenders control and domination, selfish ambition and self promotion. Love even surrenders self-defense. Love, purely, surrenders all of self to the service of others.
In a perfect world, if all loved this way, then we would need not fear betrayal or oppression or the con. Without a doubt, we do not have a perfect world, so you must love at the risk of pain. To love in the hope of some pay-off is not love at all, but manipulation or scheming. To fill the eternal hole in your spirit, you must surrender your self-interest and seek the well being of others: friends, family, neighbors, waiters, clerks, clients, spouses, parents, children, bosses, strangers and the faceless masses. You must love the outcast, the weak, the ugly, the poor, the mean, the pretentious, the hypocritical. You must love all at the hazard of your own convenience, dreams, hope and wealth. Love does not boast. Love is not proud. Loves lies down as a doormat, when necessary, and love does not gossip. Love empowers all and every situation with meaning, with value, with dignity, redemption and beauty. Love forgives and does not hold grudges, even with the wrong is fact and a grudge is justified. Love is not jealous of friends or rivals who achieve your own goals first. Love celebrates their success. Love’s greatest protest is the quiet excellence of its own work.
Engaging others without love mocks the eternal within them. You mock God and yourself when you tempt others for your own profit. Engaging others to promote your own happiness without regard for theirs is brutal, animal behavior. You must give up your own life if you ever hope to regain it.
Love everyone you used to ignore. Love everyone all the time without exception or excuse. When you love, you will suffer disappointment, betrayal, injustice and unfair pain. Love will cost you more than you profit. Love everyone all the time without exception or excuse.
Loving people will begin to fill your eternal spirit, but your spirit will always be hungry until you engage Eternity Himself. He lives, and He created it all. God loves you first and more than you can ever love yourself. He wants nothing more than for your eternal spirit to come and meet His, but so many questions interrupt you here: How can God have created or tolerate so much injustice and suffering? Why did God do it this way? How can a loving God allow such a horrible mess? First, God did not abandon justice, love, mercy and peace, but it is we in our selfish vanity who have skewed the perfect world we imagine. How dare you discard God when you are so frail and flawed and broken yourself? Second, He has provided perfect means to reconcile us to ourselves and to Him. He longs to fill your gaping, wounded life with satisfaction, joy, peace and deliverance, all through love.
The proof of His love and the means of deliverance from your wasted life is the familiar story you think you know but have forgotten or ignored. God showed us how to love each other and to love Him, and thus be validated and satisfied, through Jesus.
Are you still reading, or did his name freak you out? Does the name offend you? Is it a joke? Can you imagine believing such a fairy tale? Does the very notion of Jesus send you in apoplectic political fits, or do you merely discard the story with the rest of ancient history?
Jesus is not just a great moral teacher. Jesus did not found a new religion from an old philosophy. Jesus was not a just a rebellious Hebrew prophet. Jesus claimed to be God Himself, the divine walking on the earth, yet he was audacious enough to love everyone he met. You must believe either that Jesus was a fraud or that he was God in the flesh, but before you jump to your conclusion, consider his odd reactions if he really were God. If Jesus’ claim is true, did he overwhelm his enemies with supernatural powers? No. Did he stamp his authority on the Roman Empire? No. Did he demand tribute from the vanquished? No. Did he assert his civil rights when he was tortured, abused and misunderstood? No.
He got down on his knees and cleaned his friends’ dirty feet. He told people to keep quiet about him, even as he healed and fed and taught. He made a wine run for a party at his mom’s request to save the host embarrassment. Jesus patiently explained himself again and again to cocky young men who were spoiling for a fight. Jesus lived in poverty in a dry land, subject to corrupt government and oppressive religion, yet he thrived. He brought light into dark hearts. He gave hope to ostracized victims and would serve them when no one else would. Jesus took the beating for slaves who deserved punishment from cruel masters. Jesus was illegally arrested, yet he did not appeal. Jesus submitted to those who never understood him. His charity and kindness were met with revenge and hard opposition, but he never stopped loving and serving. Even until the end, as he was being executed without due process, by torture and humiliation, he comforted those who shared his fate, but he demanded and took no comfort himself. He loved at the risk of pain and suffered in magnitudes beyond your inconvenience.
Even as his own creation killed him, even as he resigned to the death that awaits us all, God was calling, healing, reconciling. Jesus died, but don’t forget, he is eternal, just like you. By his example and power, your spirit need not die. Jesus overcame the temporary world, the weak, fleeting, mortal mess; he defeated death. In himself, Jesus lived and loved, died and lived again, so that we may do the same and engage, once again, Eternity, God Himself, Who loves you.
You may learn to love others on your own and may even get good at it, but until you have died and live again, you cannot know the eternal love of God. He set eternity in your heart when He created you. Your eternal heart will not be satisfied until it meets its Maker again. By Jesus you are able, because He loves you more.
You are a frail, scared, selfish fool. You have tried everything in your meager power to make your life something more, but you are not capable. You are not smart enough, good enough, pretty enough or strong enough to save yourself. You are a sickly slave in poverty. You must give up and follow the example of the one who sacrificed himself for the deliverance of those far weaker than he. See Jesus, who loved you to death, and follow him to God. He wants to fill you life with abundance, joy and peace. Love Jesus, and love like Jesus.
Is this counterintuitive to your sophisticated mind? You are crying out for meaning among the meaningless. You seek riches among ruins. Love God with all your heart, mind, spirit, soul and strength. Love others as you love yourself. Jesus said that everything else hangs on this love. Follow Jesus, and be filled.
Good News to Call Out My American Generation:
Twenty eight is the new eighteen. Why can’t you grow up? You’ve learned good lessons from the Boomers, from the frivolous ‘80s, from the nihilistic ‘90s, through the age of information and terror. You’ve learned so well what the world is not, but you have yet to realize what it is. You’ve learned what you don’t want to be, but you still flail about, grasping for a calling, digging around for something valuable in a world of cosmetic fluff. You long for self-actualization while being bombarded with ads, sex and debt.
What do you want to be when you grow up? Sure, you said, “I want a job where I can help people.” You said, “I don’t want to be a part of the machine.” You even said, “Money isn’t that important to me.” Then you got six credit cards in college to live like an adult with a job and to afford adventures and experiences that you hoped would invent yourself in a boring world.
You scorned others’ obsession with physical perfection, then sold your soul to be as attractive as possible to whomever you want to want you, to entice sensations that belie your feigned disinterest in celebrity bodies and style. You hide a cowering heart behind bold words of defiance and big dreams that outstrip your reality and talent.
You rail against political injustice. You cry out against the sins of your fathers. You wear pity and angst on your sleeve. You gripe about the status quo. Your bile rises at any hint of hypocrisy in the system. You complain, complain and complain yet do nothing but insulate yourself with artificial relationships, staged reality, simulated adventure and state of the art toys.
Despite your quick judgment on society’s ills, you wilt when called to serve, to sacrifice, to go without. You admire the good among us but will not surrender your inalienable right to happiness and lattes. You cry out against social injustice but drop billions each weekend for phony art and forgettable entertainment. You forgot your ambition to help people when you couldn’t make the lease payments on a ride your parents couldn’t afford. Then you ask them to finance your continuing search for self.
You are a sad failure. You are a hypocrite, and you have pimped your own life so that others will want your body. You know the right words but sell out your pure intentions when the cost of service might evict you from a nice place in a trendy neighborhood, when the cost of giving might make you miss a night of TV, when the cost of charity and hospitality will inconvenience your fun.
You neglect your true heart in case you might look weak. You are terrified of discomfort, but you are more terrified of what others will think if you are uncomfortable. You are not so scared of failing as having appeared to have failed. You are weak. You are tired. You are a fool. You are a coward. You’re scared to death that someone will find out that you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re afraid that your bluster is not enough. You are frightened of missing the inside joke. You sneak away from sacrifice and hardship, because you know that you’re not up to the task. You say God’s name but your only desperate prayer is that you won’t have to suffer.
You scrounge for validation because you are invalid. You cast about for meaning because you have none. You experiment for spirituality because you do not know who, or whose, you are. You scorn the system even though you are its tool. You cry out for peace, even though you give none. You demand respect because you have not earned it.
You have accepted the proposition that everything is false. You do not trust because you are not trustworthy. You are frail, so everyone else must be, too. You say, “Perception is reality,” as if you believe it, but you just hope it’s true. If the world is as you believe it to be, then surely you’re no worse than the rest, maybe even a little better. You put too much faith in your own point of view, especially when you know, deep down, that you have no credibility. You’re a cop-out whiner, but a little self-deception goes a long way.
You don’t need to be saved from persecution. You don’t need to be saved from poverty. You don’t need to be saved from war. You don’t need to be saved from the system. You don’t need to be saved from culture or pop culture. You don’t need to be saved from your broken home. You don’t need to be saved from the economy or a lagging job market. You’re out of excuses. You need to be saved from yourself.
Who will save you? You might be surprised. Nothing in this world will satisfy your needs, the emptiness that haunts you. You are an eternal creature in a temporal world. You are designed with a hole in your heart, a longing for fulfillment. Everything you want is in your spirit, not your body.
Your spirit is eternal but you insist on feeding it temporary nourishment. You feed the spirit with money that you will waste or spend or lose. You feed your spirit with electronics, cars, clothes, music, fads and trends that will be out of mode in half a year. You feed your spirit with adrenaline-pumping adventure or endorphin-spewing sports for a rush that provokes only greater cravings. You feed your eternal spirit with things that decay. You feed your spirit with any body you can coax into bed with you, those who use you as much as you use them, for gratification of your mortal body with no thought of contracting sexually transmitted depression. Your short-sighted lust corrodes your spirit. No wonder your heart cracks and wilts and cries out for meaning. The temporal will not satisfy the eternal.
Where may your eternal spirit find eternal nourishment? Only by engaging other eternal beings and thriving among the immortals. We have access to two eternal classes: God, in His own class, and our immortal selves. We are eternal spirits crying out, as deep calls to deep. We seek each other, even without knowing, because we long for the eternal to fill our hearts. God waits while we dance around each other, trying not to get hurt. You fear the vulnerability, the risk, the inconvenience and sacrifice of engaging other people, other eternal souls, yet this is your calling. Simply said, yet supremely difficult to live, you must love. Love surrenders control and domination, selfish ambition and self promotion. Love even surrenders self-defense. Love, purely, surrenders all of self to the service of others.
In a perfect world, if all loved this way, then we would need not fear betrayal or oppression or the con. Without a doubt, we do not have a perfect world, so you must love at the risk of pain. To love in the hope of some pay-off is not love at all, but manipulation or scheming. To fill the eternal hole in your spirit, you must surrender your self-interest and seek the well being of others: friends, family, neighbors, waiters, clerks, clients, spouses, parents, children, bosses, strangers and the faceless masses. You must love the outcast, the weak, the ugly, the poor, the mean, the pretentious, the hypocritical. You must love all at the hazard of your own convenience, dreams, hope and wealth. Love does not boast. Love is not proud. Loves lies down as a doormat, when necessary, and love does not gossip. Love empowers all and every situation with meaning, with value, with dignity, redemption and beauty. Love forgives and does not hold grudges, even with the wrong is fact and a grudge is justified. Love is not jealous of friends or rivals who achieve your own goals first. Love celebrates their success. Love’s greatest protest is the quiet excellence of its own work.
Engaging others without love mocks the eternal within them. You mock God and yourself when you tempt others for your own profit. Engaging others to promote your own happiness without regard for theirs is brutal, animal behavior. You must give up your own life if you ever hope to regain it.
Love everyone you used to ignore. Love everyone all the time without exception or excuse. When you love, you will suffer disappointment, betrayal, injustice and unfair pain. Love will cost you more than you profit. Love everyone all the time without exception or excuse.
Loving people will begin to fill your eternal spirit, but your spirit will always be hungry until you engage Eternity Himself. He lives, and He created it all. God loves you first and more than you can ever love yourself. He wants nothing more than for your eternal spirit to come and meet His, but so many questions interrupt you here: How can God have created or tolerate so much injustice and suffering? Why did God do it this way? How can a loving God allow such a horrible mess? First, God did not abandon justice, love, mercy and peace, but it is we in our selfish vanity who have skewed the perfect world we imagine. How dare you discard God when you are so frail and flawed and broken yourself? Second, He has provided perfect means to reconcile us to ourselves and to Him. He longs to fill your gaping, wounded life with satisfaction, joy, peace and deliverance, all through love.
The proof of His love and the means of deliverance from your wasted life is the familiar story you think you know but have forgotten or ignored. God showed us how to love each other and to love Him, and thus be validated and satisfied, through Jesus.
Are you still reading, or did his name freak you out? Does the name offend you? Is it a joke? Can you imagine believing such a fairy tale? Does the very notion of Jesus send you in apoplectic political fits, or do you merely discard the story with the rest of ancient history?
Jesus is not just a great moral teacher. Jesus did not found a new religion from an old philosophy. Jesus was not a just a rebellious Hebrew prophet. Jesus claimed to be God Himself, the divine walking on the earth, yet he was audacious enough to love everyone he met. You must believe either that Jesus was a fraud or that he was God in the flesh, but before you jump to your conclusion, consider his odd reactions if he really were God. If Jesus’ claim is true, did he overwhelm his enemies with supernatural powers? No. Did he stamp his authority on the Roman Empire? No. Did he demand tribute from the vanquished? No. Did he assert his civil rights when he was tortured, abused and misunderstood? No.
He got down on his knees and cleaned his friends’ dirty feet. He told people to keep quiet about him, even as he healed and fed and taught. He made a wine run for a party at his mom’s request to save the host embarrassment. Jesus patiently explained himself again and again to cocky young men who were spoiling for a fight. Jesus lived in poverty in a dry land, subject to corrupt government and oppressive religion, yet he thrived. He brought light into dark hearts. He gave hope to ostracized victims and would serve them when no one else would. Jesus took the beating for slaves who deserved punishment from cruel masters. Jesus was illegally arrested, yet he did not appeal. Jesus submitted to those who never understood him. His charity and kindness were met with revenge and hard opposition, but he never stopped loving and serving. Even until the end, as he was being executed without due process, by torture and humiliation, he comforted those who shared his fate, but he demanded and took no comfort himself. He loved at the risk of pain and suffered in magnitudes beyond your inconvenience.
Even as his own creation killed him, even as he resigned to the death that awaits us all, God was calling, healing, reconciling. Jesus died, but don’t forget, he is eternal, just like you. By his example and power, your spirit need not die. Jesus overcame the temporary world, the weak, fleeting, mortal mess; he defeated death. In himself, Jesus lived and loved, died and lived again, so that we may do the same and engage, once again, Eternity, God Himself, Who loves you.
You may learn to love others on your own and may even get good at it, but until you have died and live again, you cannot know the eternal love of God. He set eternity in your heart when He created you. Your eternal heart will not be satisfied until it meets its Maker again. By Jesus you are able, because He loves you more.
You are a frail, scared, selfish fool. You have tried everything in your meager power to make your life something more, but you are not capable. You are not smart enough, good enough, pretty enough or strong enough to save yourself. You are a sickly slave in poverty. You must give up and follow the example of the one who sacrificed himself for the deliverance of those far weaker than he. See Jesus, who loved you to death, and follow him to God. He wants to fill you life with abundance, joy and peace. Love Jesus, and love like Jesus.
Is this counterintuitive to your sophisticated mind? You are crying out for meaning among the meaningless. You seek riches among ruins. Love God with all your heart, mind, spirit, soul and strength. Love others as you love yourself. Jesus said that everything else hangs on this love. Follow Jesus, and be filled.
posted by JRB at 10:18 PM
3 Comments:
A note on style, and quick amen to DWK:
As to style, I must say that I was reluctant and uncomfortable writing this in second person, and I'm still working through the reasons. The OT prophets and John the Baptist certainly didn't shirk the aggressive "you," but we generally do. Here, especially, as I am a member of the audience to whom I write, and subject to the same criticism, I may have written it in first person plural.
More to the point, though, I tooks style and structure cues for this piece from JTB's sermons at Mark 1:1-9, Mt. 3:1-17 and Luke 3:1-22, and from Peter's sermon/lesson to Cornelius at Acts 10:36-43 and Paul's sermon to a Jewish audience at Acts 13:17-14. In each, Jesus is the core of the message, but each address and define specific audiences and contour their delivery to those to whom they seek to proclaim the good news of Christ.
Also, I realized in the writing that I was following C.S. Lewis's structure in Mere Christianity, as he addressed the gospel to unbelievers as he had been. Lewis wrote to a thoroughly modern audience, and he led with non-religious observations, building to non-religious conclusions before translating those secular-moral-social observations into spiritual truths and ultimately a proclamation of Christ. Before he got there, though, he assumed nothing and strove to build credibility in his factual observations about mankind and society, eliciting credibility and trust in those observations, before drawing his audience further into conclusions of faith. Here, I hoped to diagnose our generation and, if the obeservations sound in truth, then perhaps the proclamations of Christ will resound in hearts.
Dean, thanks for the thoughts and insights, and amen to them all. Can you clear something up, though. Is this a criticism or a compliment: "At first this seems more like an OT prophet pronouncing damnation upon God's people, but. . . " Someone else wrote me privately to say that she thought it sounded "OT" at first, or maybe "Pauline," and I don't think she meant it nicely.
Well, I laughed at the "I don't think she meant it nicely..." comment.
I think it was the length of the address to a many faceted audience that wore me down. I read all the Biblical references you mentioned in your comment. "You brood of vipers" was a short paragraph which quickly was followed by the good news of Christ's coming. Your writings are right on target for much of your generation --- I just had difficulty identifying it as a gospel because by the time I reached the good news part, I was worn down by all the judgement of badness of the Gen-X generation and didn't want to listen anymore.
For me, who is twice the Gen-X age, the gospels are a place where the individual is left to self-awareness of their sins --When the woman at the well said she had no husband, Jesus said she spoke the truth and she knew wherein she sinned. When John the Baptist said "You brood of vipers" we know that the priests he is speaking to are somehow missing the mark. They, in their egoism and self righteousness, probably don't have a clue; their hearts are closed. However, JTB does not list for them all their wrongdoings, he just says God can cut them down at the roots and their heritage will not save them. They are left to ponder their predicament.
This is the glory of the Gospels for me --- the dwelling on the glorious fact that the Son of God lived and died for me, a sinner. Blessed are the meek, the pure at heart, the peacemakers --- these examples tell me without words that the opposite of these actions is cursed. The Gospels are positive affirmations, positive examples that make me ponder my sinful nature and call me to follow Christ's example.
The Old Testament just has more of the judgement -- "you do this but you do that" pattern of speech in my recollection so that's why I picked up on the dwk comment.
From the C. S. Lewis standpoint, this is a good essay. For me, it just didn't resound as a gospel.
Peace - CDB
jeff -
lots Of great insights and truths in what yon write. But l don't get the sense of joy and apprehension I sense in the gospels and that i believe to be central to what the gospels are.
I'm as cynical as the next, but found the jeremiad too harsh a swaddling cloth for the Lion of Judah. c. s. lewis, even at his prophetic worst, maintained a sense of sublime excitement about What Was To Come. i think this is the element to be added to what is otherwise an eloquent and passionate plea you've written.
jeff richardson
[posting from my pda on an airplane]
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