The Grittiness of the Gospel

While I have always been a person in tune with my emotions, I have never enjoyed unbounded sappiness. The kind of cheesy type stuff you would expect in a romantic comedy. It is one of my least favorite things about the current state of the church.

I have come from an upbringing that emphasized taking on problems and not shying away from them. To act like everything is good and not talk to anyone about it or resolve it is something I just can't do. I find that we make the church into a giant cheesy cliche factory. Much of the worship songs seem like we have just stolen love songs and thrown a couple of "Jesus" and "God" references in there, kinda making it sound like we love God in a much different way than we do. It's kinda awkward. Many sermons are feel good "get em for the gipper" type of motivational speeches. They only show a small facet of our faith and what encourages it. They lack the amount of transparency and depth that Jesus, the disciples, and the prophets showed. This really makes it seem like we are just living a small commune of awkward overly happy people perpetually on Prozac.

The gospel that is taught in the Bible is a more severe and tougher pill to swallow than mainstream Christianity makes it to be. My favorite stories are about people who had to pull through in the utmost experiences and look to God for hope. Habakkuk trusting God in spite of the impending doom of the Babylonians. Hosea marrying a prostitute who is unfaithful to show God's redemption for Israel. Stephen asking God to forgive people as they stone him to death for preaching repentance. This is the tough, intense form of faith that Jesus really taught. Jesus even stressed intensely so much about his impending death that he sweat drops of blood. These men did not have it easy. They didn't sugarcoat reality.

Jesus preached for us to take up our cross and deny ourselves to follow Him (Mark 8:34-37). Now essentially for us to put it in our words we would have to say "take up you r lethal injection". You get the picture. Jesus lines out that we have to be willing to die and endure pain to follow Him. Habakkuk showed this. To deny ourselves we have to give up our wants and desires. In our consumer driven, individualistic country we don't want to deny ourselves of anything and do what people want for us. To let God be who we follow is to reject our own desires and practice self denial. Hosea truly did this in marrying a woman no one would want to marry. To give up these things is to follow Jesus in this gritty relationship of Christianity.

One of my favorite quotes ever is that "the church is not a country club for the healthy, but that it is a hospital for the broken". When we give off the glossy look of not having any problems in the church and making it too superficial those who are broken are turned off. They feel like they have to set off the same vibe of perfection as Christians to fit in, and it just isn't so. We are all broken and battered. We all have pain setting in, even if we don't want to show it. We should show the same transparency and honesty about our pains that hurt others. To deny our pain and subsequent restoration from Jesus is to belittle God's healing power. 

While I do not want you to take away from this that I want you to be perpetually depressed and self hating, we should be willing to show a certain severity about our faith that is lacking. We cannot overlook the grittiness for a caricature of Christianity that is merely meant to give us warm fuzzy feelings and make us feel better about ourselves.