One of the largest rallying cries of the day is to be countercultural - to rebel against the culture, and in so doing illuminate to the world the truth which you proclaim, or at the very least live it out.
When I was growing up, my favorite style of music was punk rock, and let's be honest...I still love it. One of the biggest parts of punk music was the attitude - pushing back against authority, culture, and norms with distorted guitars and blasting drums.
For whatever reason, there's always been a spark within me that desires to push back, to question, to not just go along with the flow but to find the truth, and in doing so, I find myself in an interesting position today...proclaiming a message of foolishness.
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." 1 Corinthians 1:18
The message of Jesus doesn't make sense. It's contrary to the rest of the world. It doesn't fit into the established norms, and honestly, it's upside down from a lot of what the Church has taught us over the years.
What do I mean by that? Quite simply, the call of Jesus has become muted both to the Church and to the World. Instead of hearing the loving call of a Savior beckoning us to sacrifice our rights and privileges to stand with the least of these, we somehow have made a savior of our own doing who wants us to demand our rights and scream, "To hell with you!" to those who don't want to go along. It’s our way or the highway.
Instead of seeing the Jesus who distanced Himself from politics, healing and doing miracles for people who were members of the occupying force of Rome and ignoring questions as to when He would restore Israel to her allegedly rightful place, we've created a savior who demands we vote the right way or else.
In The Signature of Jesus, Brennan Manning states, "We continue to confuse nationalized faith with fidelity to Jesus Christ. Jingoism [extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy, excessive bias in judging ones own country as superior to others] and Christianity become synonymous to the belief that God is pleased with, beholden to, partial to, and identified with our land." While such a statement seems radical by today's standard of "Christianity", perhaps this is what Paul meant when he declared the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing?
Christ's call was never to lay claim to power for ourselves or defend our rights. When the disciples He called to Himself endeavored to call down fire on those who did not receive Jesus, Jesus rebuked James and John and said, "you do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." (Luke 9:55-56)
The Gospel truly is the most countercultural force on the planet: both revolutionary to those who truly see it and foolish to those who don't see it for what it is.
The Gospel looks foolish because the call is to lay down our lives for our fellow humans, not to try to save our lives. Jesus said, "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." (Matthew 16:25). Again, this seems foolish to the world and to much of the Church, but it fits squarely within the call of God to be the ones leading the way for our neighbor over ourselves.
This is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, "When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die." Bonhoeffer isn't literally stating that we are to die physically, but that when called by Christ we are now dead to ourselves, we no longer live in service to ourselves, but in service to Christ.
Life can no longer be about what we get out of it, rather, it is about what we put into it. How can we make the world a better place? How can we display the love of Jesus to those around us, despite whatever manufactured divisions we might have created?
Again, Manning states, "We are the pilgrim people of God with no lasting city here on earth, a community of free men and women whose freedom is not limited by the frontiers of a world that is itself in chains." It's time to stop limiting ourselves the way the world and the Church at large have limited us all.
God is not bound by country or political party. God is not bound by geographical boundaries. God is Love. The moment we begin to recognize that and use that love to recognize the humanity of those around us and offering them the common dignity, love, respect, and compassion that Jesus did is when we'll begin to truly be those who do the greater works that Jesus spoke of, but not before.
Anything less than the way of Jesus is antichrist and antithetical to our calling as believers, regardless of how correct it may look.
As for me? I choose the way of the foolish to proclaim the radical message that Jesus isn't mad at you, He's mad about you. He loves you more than anything else, and nothing will ever change that.
Grace Himself invites you to come sit at the table.
Will you answer the call?
By Grace,
Dave