A different kind of freedom

What would Jesus really do?

A number of years ago a trend was for Christians to have the letters WWJD? emblazoned on jewellery, pencil cases and bumper stickers..

It’s a good question.

Turns out what he would do is come and be a model of a completely different value system than our world values.

Turns out that he is asking us to also model that same value system.

And know what?

Turns out he doesn’t think it will help us be very popular!!

^{Matthew 10}

^24-25“A student doesn’t get a better desk than her teacher. A laborer doesn’t make more money than his boss. Be content—pleased, even—when you, my students, my harvest hands, get the same treatment I get. If they call me, the Master, ‘Dungface,’ what can the workers expect?

^26-27“Don’t be intimidated. Eventually everything is going to be out in the open, and everyone will know how things really are. So don’t hesitate to go public now.

²⁸“Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life—body and soul—in his hands.

I found this passage both liberating and challenging.

As I have shared in an earlier post, there is a big part of me that wants to organise Fusion so things are easier..  Jesus seems to be saying that easy isn’t part of the plan.

What I love about what Jesus is saying though is that I don’t need to be driven by fear of failure.. failure in the world’s eyes seems often to be success in the Kingdom.

I realise that I often hold back from fear of people.. this passage puts things into perspective and part of me goes “oh yeah, that’s right, they can’t really do anything !!”

I was just reading about Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It’s amazing what you can achieve if you are prepared to suffer.

Philip Yancey reflects on Martin Luther King:

I grew up in Atlanta, across town from Martin Luther King Jr., and I confess with some shame that while he was leading marches in places like Selma and Montgomery and Memphis, I was on the side of the white sheriffs with the night sticks and German Shepherds. I was quick to pounce on his moral flaws and slow to recognize my own blind sin. But because he stayed faithful, by offering his body as a target but never as a weapon, he broke through my moral calluses.

The real goal, King used to say, was not to defeat the white man, but “to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor and challenge his false sense of superiority… The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community.” And that is what Martin Luther King Jr. finally set into motion, even in racists like me.

Yancey goes on to point out that more and more people began adopting this principle of nonviolent protest as a way to demand justice. Nations like the Philippines, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, Albania, The Soviet Union and Chile have used this form of protest to overthrow governments.

Both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. attribute their inspiration as Jesus Christ.

I will continue this journey with Matthew chapter 10 tomorrow…