The Christianity that I don’t really like

There is an aspect of Christian discipleship that I am slowly, and unwillingly, coming to grips with.

I have made the mistake of reading a lot of N.T. Wright, and have found that the way he frames the journey of Christianity is deeply and personally confronting – mainly because I know it is true, and I don’t like it!

Wright points out that some Christians focus on the cross and God’s grace. For them, what was important was that he was born, and then he died and was resurrected. His life was simply the interval between those two great events. For others, Wright asserts, the major focus is on Jesus’ life, he is a great moral teacher, but the claim of resurrection is suspicious. For them the major focus is on Jesus’s counter cultural teachings.

Wright points out the fundamental truth, that by focussing on the cross without focussing on Jesus’s counter-cultural life, leads to a pale grey, almost gnostic version of Christianity. He also points out that by avoiding the virgin birth, cross and resurrection, proponents of the Jesus as moral teacher, fundamentally miss out on who he was. One of Wright’s major themes is that the Kingdom of God, and the grace of the cross, cannot be separated.

The bit that I don’t like about that, is that Wright points out that the Kingdom of God actually comes through the cross. When Jesus exhorts us five times to take up our own crosses, he is outlining the method by which his Kingdom comes: death.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to give up my life. I want to be in control. Jesus invites us to let go of security and control, a process which is never easy. Jesus himself begged in the Garden of Gethsemane for another way.

This is an uncomfortable Christianity, a Christianity that calls us out of neat plans and organisation, and neat theology into a world of counter-cultural trust in a God that most of the world don’t recognize as trustworthy. This kind of Christianity flies in the face of all the world deems as normal and calls us to make the Kingdom of God our primary objective at the cost of our own egos, in they way modeled for us by Jesus.

I appreciate how Eugene Peterson conveyed Galatians 2:19 in his Message paraphrase:

Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central.

I have been wrestling with the truth of this kind of Christianity this year because it has been a year in which I have had to lay down most of the supports for my identity. I have had to lay down what I thought my plans were and enter a place of profound uncertainty. As I have found myself in this place, I have discovered that Jesus was here before I was, and the whole process has been stripping away parts of my identity that have been needed to be stripped away for a long time. That does not mean that I like the process, or that I would ever choose to be here. N.T. Wright asserts that we will all have to face our Gethsemane experiences. I wish it wasn’t true. I wish there was a less cross shaped way of following Christ, but there simply isn’t.

The other thing about Gethsemane is that there are no guarantees. God doesn’t come to Jesus and tell him that he only has to hold on for 48 hours and it will all be ok. God turns his back. Gethsemane is a dark place, a place of pain. In the midst of the pain it is sorely tempting to find a way out. Ultimately though, I know that the only way out of Gethsemane is through Gethsemane.

The only way to life, is through death. Avoiding the death just prolongs the experience.

Yes this is not a comfortable Christianity, but there is part of me that knows it is the only one that is real, and it is the only one that leads me to real life.