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| Do Not Shut-Up |
I hate pain. I used
to train as a wrestler and it was grueling.
I don’t think I can explain it well, but I’ll give an example. When I was a freshman in High School we were
doing a “Red Alert.” You moved from
station to station: push-ups, sit-ups in another, running stairs…etc. Each
station was 1 min. We did it straight
for 45 min. You did it with as much energy
as you could give.
Anyway this one time I was dying. I hurt so bad; muscles and lungs. In my despair I gave a grimacing look to the
coach and asked the stupid question “How much more time?” He responded “30 more minutes.” I just cried.
I was already whipped. I didn’t
think I could finish. Lest you think I
was weak, I was in the 110% club on the team, I was amongst the hardest workers. By my senior year I would do the Red Alerts,
wrestling practice and then run after practice four miles from school to my
house. My perspective changed and my
endurance for pain increased.
I have found that carrying out the will of God is more grueling
than Red Alerts. We have to suffer. It is normal for life. Some pain is self-induced along with natural
suffering. But taking on Christ is an
additional pain that is surprising.
We all suffer just being alive. We get colds and cancer. We stub toes, go to work, and have neighbors and
other conflicts. And then there is
family lalala. You get the idea. Inescapable!
Then there are the stupid things I’ve done. I’m talking primarily about sin. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, and a desire
that is insatiable; this all lead to trouble.
Always wanting and striving caused me a lot of pain and lead to emotional
and physiological issues. There is no
peace in this state.
Coming to Christ, like many, I thought “If I do what is right
with God, things would go better.” No
one had to tell me this, “It just goes to reason.” Do good and God will bless you and do bad,
well, “Karma” will kick your hinny. I
did find that as I quit striving as a pagan much of my pain subsided. I received a relative peace.
I was still suffering the natural pain though. I knew I would, I guess, but it was buried deep. I think it was tied to cultural superstition
of the Bible and Jesus. This was
frustrating. I still had bills, family,
work problems…I was disillusioned quickly.
This was good; the illusion was gone and I could move on.
But here is the chaw.
This greasy slim of bitter Coppenhagen in the lip, an over-active
salivary gland that makes you spit. I
would now take up the suffering of Christ?
I thought “But wait, I wanted less trouble. That’s why I went to church, that’s why I
started doing good.”
Like Jesus we will suffer.
A student is not greater than his master. We suffer in two ways for being CHRIST-ians. There are two enemies. The pain from serving and the suffering of tares,
we will call them christians not CHRIST-ians.
This is a funny side note. I’m
trying to write “christian” in a lower case c to emphasis the “said-follower” over
the real CHRIST-ian and my program hardly lets me.
The suffering from helping others comes in various
forms. You have less money to care for
you, you have less time for you; you have more trouble. You take on the trouble of others and receive
no appreciation. And to boot, those you
help often times reward you with mistreatment.
They speak poorly about you, guilt always does, and they steal and manipulate. You bear the weight of their idiosyncrasies
and on and on. I could write a book on
this; actually I am. This is inspired by
experience and Richard Wormbrandt, Voice of the Martyrs founder; Sufferology is
the topic.
Now I’m finally to why I’m writing. The Christian will assail you for serving as
Christ would have. “If they hated me
they will hate you too.” We think it is
the world that persecutes and we have evidence of the fact. But I’ll let Voice of the Martyrs write about
that. There is a surprising resistance
in the church to self-denial and cross bearing.
The context of Christ is a religious community. He suffered from them not Rome. All his comments on mistreatment are to be
understood from this point of view. We
can see the religious Jews hated him.
They resisted Him. They killed
Him and a Pagan ruler tried to save him.
Pilate is a great foil.
You won’t experience this unless you obey Christ. When you step outside the herd, you disturb
the religious ether. The “spirit” in
Christ’s religious context still resides today.
A demon possession of its host.
The host is the visible church.
Those who abide in Christ, these are part of the invisible,
worldwide, universal church. Read my
blog on abiding…as audacious as it sounds you probably do not understand it.
Remember Jesus speaking of the tares. I think you do, so I won’t explain. These are by far the majority population in
the church today in America. Are there truly
224 million Christians in the American church?
I have a friend who pastors a large prominent church In Seattle,
WA. He says his guess is that 80% of his
congregation will perish in Hell. Of
course he doesn’t tell them and I won’t give his name. He needs his job; I say this tongue-in-cheek.
You will be rejected, ignored, marginalized, threatened, shoed-out
and maligned. I had an assistant pastor
tell my brother-in-law that he wanted to punch me in the face. By the way this pastor is a good guy. You would love him. I think he is cool too. But he wants the status quo; that which he is
accustomed. Overall it doesn’t matter
what the Bible says for many of us.
Desire rules! People will stand
strong and boldly, dogmatically, bigotedly over benign doctrines that do not
effect lifestyle. But! If you mess with a guy’s life; Well “Those are
fightin words!”
Previously, I’ve written a blog entitled “A Fun Day: Christian
Bigotry” Read it to get a strange example of rejection.
When you lay your life down and live a life style of
service, when you state without equivocation that this is the way of Christ and
what salvation is; “Boy, you done hit a
bees nest.” And if you obey the
scripture to figure out a way to move the church in that same direction of love
and good deeds, it will be unpleasant.
Go try it it’ll be fun…that is, if you like fellowship with Jesus and
His suffering.
Phil 3:10-11 I want
to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing
in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to
attain to the resurrection from the dead. NIV
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