Christians like to talk about revival.
They talk about how they want to see spontaneous salvations. They talk about how they want to see people giving up the life they've been living and following God, going to church, worshiping, etc. They want a miraculous move of God to fall on the city or country that makes everyone, whether hardened atheist or life-long believers to be completely enthralled in the presence of Jesus.
In fact, Christians like to talk about lots of things that they want to happen.
I see them say things like “I want to just shine so much Jesus that the world can't help but wonder what I have.” “I want to live in such a way that people ask me what's different.” “Shine – make them wonder what you've got, make them wish that they were not on the outside looking in.”
And so on.
But I've began to wonder if it's not a slight deception. Maybe the Christians who pray for those things aren't quite sure what they want. I mean, think about it if we talked that way in other areas of life:
At the restaurant:
“I'm just going to have some quiet time with my menu, and really just connect with the thing I want, so much that I won't even have to tell the waitress what I want – she'll just see it all over me.”
At work:
“Instead of sales calls today, I'm just going to enjoy our product so much that complete strangers will walk up to me and ask me what I'm selling.”
At the grocery store:
“I'm going to be so focused on dinner tonight that the ingredients will practically jump off the shelf into my basket.”
At home:
“I want to be so into my family that we completely forget where we even live, and it doesn't matter what house we walk into just as long as we're together.”
At school:
“I want to study so well that the people around me can just feel my knowledge of the subject as I walk down the hall with them.”
It's ludicrous, right? We would never accept things like that in other areas of our life. Why do we in our spiritual walk? It's simple: we're creating an excuse. One big excuse after another.
See, by saying that you're going to be such a perfect example of a love relationship with Jesus that you will attract and draw people in, you've created a double-fault scenario. You can always win, because if – by some miracle - you do end up attracting a non-Christian and winning them over, you can feel all self-righteous and good about how spiritual you are. However, if you fail to attract a non-Christian, then the stupid non-Christian must not have been paying good enough attention or was just a REAL BIG sinner anyways.
The problem with this whole line of reasoning is that it alleviates the church of responsibility. When Jesus was calling us to be the salt of the earth, he wasn't telling us to evenly disperse ourselves and wait for the earth to be devoured. He was telling us to be active change-agents in our friendships, communities, cities, and countries. He even went on to talk about how salt that doesn't do anything is worthless and only fit to be thrown into the road.
I wonder how Jesus would feel about salt that expects the food surrounding it to be intrigued or jealous of the salt and spontaneously turn salty itself.
Anyways, there's a quote by Shane Claiborne that I love: “Most people today would be able to tell you what a Christian believes. But ask them how a Christian lives, and they're stumped.”
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