The Non-Self-Help Gospel |
| Posted by Mark (mark) on Dec 13 2008 |
In the last few years, one of the things I have admittedly pilloried Western Christianity over, is its devolution into a self-help gospel; a spiritual Prozac that only masks symptoms, never curing the true problem. A close friend of mine is fond of saying that we try to sell Jesus as though He were a used car. It’s not hard to arrive at this vantage when exposed to the seeker-sensitive/attractional/prosperity movement, and the namby-pamby exhortations dripping from the sickly-sweet lips of televangelists; you know the exhortations I’m talking about: Jesus will make you the best you can be; God doesn’t want us to suffer, he wants us to prosper; if you’ll follow this 7 step program I’ve written (7 is the number of wholeness, perfection, you know!) God will deliver you from your (fill in the blank) crisis. These kinds of statements are powerfully deceptive because they are full of half-truths and appeal to our selfishness. That’s right I said it, they appeal to our selfishness. How’s that for a kick in our piety? I’m not sure I like the implications either, but let me explain before you decide to lambaste my suppositions.
The other day as I was watching a typically banal, faceless preacher waltz back and forth across my television; and light-heartedly wondering if some humans were actually invertebrates, and if so, if that crisp Armani suit was indeed carrying enough starch to really keep him upright, and how highly I now thought of Armani suits if that was the case—and it really did appear so; I listened as this man spouted on and on politically. I don’t mean political in that he said anything about the government per se, but that he used many, many words and said almost nothing of substance. His homily was little more than a dribbling of self-help clichés veneered with New Testament terms, and worn out anecdotes dressed up in fancy new clothes. I wondered why his audience didn’t seem to see how indistinguishable this drivel is to fads like “The Secret”, which so many of us cry “bloody murder” over.
It got me to thinking how Jesus’ gospel and our conception of His gospel are completely inverted in some respects. I wondered how Jesus’ gospel can call for sacrifice and death to self-government, while our gospel seems to be sold as a panacea and augment of self-government. When did the gospel become a tutor that teaches you how to manage your life better? Does it not strike a sour note in us when we survey history and see Christians suffering, martyred, giving up family and friends and possessions and ambitions at the beck and call of the Spirit, while we live in relative luxury—and are generally empty people, who run headlong toward a clarion of wealth, security, or just comfort? Our gospel seems to be this: selfish accumulation; Jesus’ gospel seemed to be this: sacrificial generosity.
For you “thought pharisees” out there (I admit to having been one many times), I am not saying we are to seek out (glorify) suffering and martyrdom; I am not even saying we should sell our possessions and move to the third-world as missionaries. I am simply pointing to the wide disparity in our used-car-salesmen-Jesus, and the man of the gospels. And I wonder where the Jesus is who has riveted countless hearts over the generations, and inspired them to give up everything for His sake. That’s the difference I see between the two gospels. Nobody who adheres to our self-help gospel seems willing to give up much beyond a tithe or offering. In fact, none of them ever seem to hear a sacrificial call from the Spirit; and if they do, there is always that powerful caveat attached about the blessings they will receive down the road because of their “generosity”. But then, why would they hear a call to sacrifice, that’s not what they were sold in the first place? It’s not even in our purview that this may happen, let alone that it is central to the gospel.
I may sound rather jaded to some of you, and perhaps I am; but I cannot help longing for a non-self-help gospel to emerge from the ashes of our rampant consumerism. I have been pierced by the love of God and can’t help but groan at my own selfishness and consumeristic tendencies. I can’t help but see how they are in direct competition with the Kingdom of God in my life. Why do we have to make the gospel so egocentric? I suppose we’re just recreating it in our own image (ouch, that hurt). Does God love us? Yes. Does he desire good things for our lives? Yes. Does that validate the self-help gospel? No.
It seems to me the self-help gospel makes the Kingdom subservient to our happiness. It becomes an addendum to our lives, intended to improve whatever we think needs improving. In full honesty, this is nothing more than syncretism; it is an amalgamation of the gospel story with our selfishness; it is our own religious Frankenstein, where we have pieced together bits of the world and bits of the gospel, then breathed our wretched life into it. Walk into any Christian bookstore and look at the rows of self-help books: 10 steps to improve this, 8 steps to heal that, how fix this, how to create that; there is really no end. I suppose that is why it works so well as a business (and what do we love better than capitalism?). The 10 step program doesn’t really solve much (especially in the long-term), and can never be enough because only He is, and so you have to keep coming back to the well and buying the next program. It becomes an addictive cycle that brings in billions of dollars annually.
But what if the gospel were about the absolutely breath-taking love of God? So much so, that we fell head-over-heals for Him, and wanted—yes wanted—to lay down our lives at His feet. What if we were so overcome by His sacrificial love, that we began to desire to return it? What if we began to lay down our lives for the sake of the world around us, as He did for us? Where would the self-help gospel be in the midst of that? Would we still be searching for the next “biblical” program to improve our lives, or would we be exploring ways to lay down our lives? What if we stopped selling the gospel as a life improvement, and revealed that it’s a loss of your life instead? What if we stopped trying to sell it altogether, and simply lived it, and proclaimed it?
Fortunately, whether we like it or not, faith always grows feet. It’s kind of a nasty wake-up call when you think about it—you are living what you believe! Sadly, there are reams of statistics out there exposing the infiltration of the world into the Western Church. We mimic the brokenness of secular society at every turn, and sometimes outpace it. Judging by this information, coupled with the self-help gospel which has attained near ubiquity across Evangelicalism, Protestantism, Charismania and the like, I am saddened at the picture emerging. What we are living indicates that Jesus is not enough for us; at least, the used-car-salesman-Jesus we bought into isn’t enough. We are a people who obviously don’t know God; yes, we know about Him, but we don’t know Him, because those in history who knew Him were overcome by Him; they wrestled with Him; they were ravaged by the very idea of His scandalous grace. They plunged themselves into Him through prayer, scripture, meditation, generosity and many other ways. How many people started this way, but faded into the self-help nonsense peddled by charming salesmen?
The sad truth is, too many churches in North America are almost devoid of the Kingdom, and the gospel preached from the pulpit and lived in the community, is but a variation of self-help secular humanism; it is the absolute antithesis of Jesus’ gospel. It leaves us empty and broken. It makes a liar out of our god. It causes some to be angry, while others keep rationalizing their emptiness away, and chasing after shadows of life.
If you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’d like to posit something for your contemplation: when Jesus is formed into a life-improvement package He isn’t enough for us, because only those who lose their life actually find it; and only He who is love, is worth losing your life for. When we reduce the gospel to self-help humanism, we remove its power because we have replaced love with self, weakness with our deluded strength, grace with self-righteousness, generosity with accumulation, sacrifice with manipulation, and most of all, Jesus’ lordship with ours. The power of the Kingdom manifests in our surrender, not in our striving. In my opinion, the self-help gospel is no more powerful, no more efficacious, than Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam or any other world religion, because they all (ultimately) are built upon our strength, and they all fall short in the end. I would even go so far as to say the Jesus of the self-help gospel, is but an effigy of our selfishness, and not worth losing one’s life for.
I long for people to hear the non-self-help gospel, and meet the Jesus who ravages hearts with mercy. The gospel about surrender rather than management; the gospel on letting go of your ambitions; the gospel that requires sacrifice; the gospel that embraces weakness; the Jesus worth dying for, and better yet, living for. And I don’t want it to be some ethereal idea with no legs. When the love of God scandalizes your heart, it begins to spill into your life. Jesus’ essence begins to flavor your thoughts and actions. Mercy, generosity, sacrifice, patience, peace and so much more find an ever-expanding home in your heart. And you’re not doing any of it to feel better about yourself; you’re not doing it to get a reward in heaven; you’re doing it for love’s sake. After all, what reward is better than Jesus Himself? Have you ever thought how silly it is to chase after heavenly treasures, when you can have Jesus?
No, our motives won’t be perfect; we have a long journey with Jesus, and we need Him to cleanse our deeply ingrained brokenness and insecurity; but it’s not about our brokenness anymore, it’s about Him now. This is the relationship we get to grow into: Jesus’ love was all about us, and as He pours it into us, our love begins to become all about Him. This is the power of the kingdom: Jesus moving in and through us as we interact with the world around us. He is the example of how to live the Kingdom, no matter where you live or how you spend your days.
Maybe we need to be asking ourselves some tough questions. Are we willing to sacrifice our lives? Are we willing to surrender some of our precious time to pursue God intimately, and get to know His voice/hand in our life? We could even ask whether we are willing to sacrifice our time for the people God puts around us, but I suspect that as we get to know God, that would naturally manifest. The truth is, the fruit-of-the-Spirit is only formed through intimacy with Jesus. Can we be merciful and generous without love? Yes. We can be ostensibly generous out of fear or greed or selfishness. There are many motivations that can cause us to mimic the fruit-of-the-Spirit, but only love naturally gives birth to them. If you think people don’t recognize generosity that has strings attached, or is hollowed out by selfishness, then you are generally wrong. We must keep in mind that relationship with Jesus is the root of everything. The Kingdom is only found in this context, no other. It is this intimacy that distinguishes Christians from secular volunteers and charities. It is this intimacy that we have to offer the world. You could sell all you own and go to poorest of the poor nations to preach, but if that decision wasn’t birthed from intimacy with Jesus, it is for not; for you don’t understand the kingdom, and will be unable to share it.
In the end, the self-help gospel can never be bigger than we are, because it is all about us; that is a major problem. Jesus is not offering to fix our lives; instead, He’s inviting us to pay the steepest price we can imagine, He’s asking for our whole life. If you don’t know a Jesus worth that asking price, you might want to re-examine the gospel you’re living.
Last changed: Dec 13 2008 at 7:49 PM
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