An Inconvenient-er truth

(Signal 4.26)

Kudos to Christianity for being easy and convenient. So many other religions require self-sacrifice and travel down a narrow-road, but we have the hook up. According to many contemporary preachers (which means it must be true), Jesus did not actually mean most of the stuff he said. This works out really well for wealthy American Christians. If he actually meant what he said about selling our possessions and giving everything to the poor, that would pretty much kill our learned way-of-life. Wealth and property are where we find our sense of worth and serve as an easy way to keep score in America. If Christians gave everything to the poor we would automatically sink to the bottom of the economic/cool totem pole and submit ourselves to the condescending public eye. People would start associating us with the poor, sick and needy-type folks (the last thing Jesus would have wanted), and then Christianity would seem less fun and appealing to non-believers. Jesus must have known the future importance of marketing Christianity (what would I do without my Testamints and “Jesus is my homeboy” shirt?), so there is no way he could have meant that literally. Seriously, who would want to join a religion that actually required sacrifice from its followers? There are many people who will tell you how much life improved after they got saved which is how a life of discipleship should be. I am pretty sure the twelve disciples died old and wealthy after following Jesus (save for that one noose incident), and this is the life Christians should expect to find today. That whole metaphorical picking-up-your-cross-to-follow-him thing can be interpreted numerous ways. What if my cross just so happens to be gold plated with a hint of bling? That seems like a reasonable interpretation of the passage. The point is that these teachings must be taken in context. Ministering to “the least of these” may have originally meant societal outcasts like the sick and homeless, but apparently this has a different meaning today since most Christians couldn’t even tell you where to find a homeless person. Thankfully most of us have been raised in churches where we learn to find the pathway of convenience and save all that not-so-fun stuff for the hardcore, odd-for-God types. After all, Christians are recognized by reflecting Jesus’ love which implies that their lives should be easy and convenient …at least as convenient as crucifixion can be, I suppose.


Supplemental Material
I am pretty sure Christianity is not supposed to be as easy as we try to make it. No other generation of Christians lived as affluently or as blended-into-society as we do today. We spend so much time and money trying to make Christianity attactive and normal that it loses meaning. If asked, most non-Christians today would describe Christians very differently than Christians should want to be described. Jesus was a radical, not a fundamentalist. He rocked the boat and challenged ideas, but many "Christians" today have been neutered and are so house-broken (aka comfortable in this world) that they are indistinguishable among non-believers. We try so hard to "sell" Christianity to people by making it appealling that the term "Christian" is not a significant characterization of someone because it has such a bland, vague meaning. Maybe if we started taking Jesus' words as literal challenges then Christianity could regain its flavor. Until then we will continue to fade into mediocrity.