Well, I would and most other honest confessing believers would say "NO way."
Those with an active mindset and a desperate desire to make this Church relevant today are doing everything they can to make it so. We have certainly seen the problems and know without a shadow of a doubt, this church must be revived... I see it and hear it everywhere: "Be the hands and feet of Jesus! Feed the poor and help the homeless! Do Justice and good to those in need! Dress trendy and sleak and listen to cool music! Read this new book about what this person did! Hear this story and get motivated to help those in need!" Now this is juxtaposed against what we have seen said in the church for 40 or so years in the fundamental churches in America: "Read your bible everday! Do your devotions! Go to bible study and church every week! Read this new book about growing in your faith!" And to those of us who have grown up in this church and have at some point or another had a serious falling away moment (I did) we hear: "You need to get back on track, Here is a really good book that helped me when I got down, You need to make God more a part of your life and so on..."
So many of these things are truly great things. So many of them have helped countless people and many of the people that have pursued these things do so with pure hearts and a desire to serve the Lord. But even more than the many are those who are simply blinded, herded, and swayed by all these noises. All these noises coming right out of the most Christian of all Christian places. The place on this earth that is more saturated with the Gospel and the Bible than any other place. We run to and fro looking for the answer to a dead church and more importantly our dead souls. We are so easily distracted and we are so quick to put a salve on our bleeding souls as we slowly blind ourselves with the next new thing the world or our so called Christian culture comes up with. We are in the business of doing and trying. Doing this good thing, doing this new class, giving to this great cause, reading this inspiring book, hear this great preacher, read this new translation of the bible, Go to this great church... Oh let us do and read and hear and go all around and about ourselves. Let us save ourselves from the religious deadness, moral decadance, brokeness, and spiritual impitence of this world; let us, for Christ's sake!
But Christ says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
Stop all this doing and trying!
The reality is that in all the scrambling, we have long forgotten what it truly means to come to Christ. What does it mean that we are heavy laden? So often we consider we are heavy laden by this world, by our bad sins, by the struggles and troubles of our families and jobs, but what the essential burden we bear is ourselves. We bear the burden of absolute slavery to ourselves and our own desires, wants, hidden lusts, contriving and striving natures. The call of Christ has always been and will always be this: "If you would come after me, you must deny self, hate the world, serve only me, and come die"... The power and truest form of the gospel lies in not just the salvation and imputing of righteousness to ourselves, but even more the very death of ourselves on that cross with Christ and the very ressurection of ourselves in the power and quickening of the Holy Spirit upon that death... There is simply no other true motivation in the Gospel to do anything good outside of this... What is it that Paul speaks so strongly about in chapter six of romans? You have died! You who have come to the cross of Christ for salvation have and must reckon yourselves dead to the old flesh! No one wants to hear that. No one wants to pick up this cross and go outside the city at the scorn of all those around them, even many within our Christian culture, and crucify themselves! This is pure folly to this world...
I will tell you, this dying does not take place just once, it must take place continously if we are to grow at all in Christ. There is no dying to found in a book, no dying to be found in a good speaker, no dying to be found in giving money or time to the poor (although seeing brokeness and not running from it is a good start to see your own broken selves)... Death to self takes place all by your lonesome; in the quite and stillness of your own time as you see within you a heart that condemns you before the holiness of God and you begin to earnestly, and I mean earnestly, cry out before the Lord as John Donne did in his poem "Batter My Heart":
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
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