Give Me a Reset, Please!

(Prologue: I promised from last time to address the question “How has your view of God changed as a result of your own disappointment, disengagement, anger, or fear (or a combination!) with the church?” Well, I am already breaking my promises. I may do that from time to time. But honestly, friends, I’m not quite ready to tackle that question so let me deviate a bit before I circle back around to it later in the post and next week. Also, yes, that main image is intentional.) 

Like me, you may be a fan of John Crist. Christianity and humor too often go hand in hand like oil and water. So when someone is able to point out our eccentricities while making us also think about how we live and what we believe, it’s like finding a diamond in the rough.

So when I read the news this past week about Crist and his moral failings, I felt, like I had a hundred times before, like my bubble hand been burst. Pop! Another Christian influencer fallen to sin. I wish I could say I am shocked. Not at all. Perhaps because I’ve—we’ve—become so inoculated with moral failings.  

In my Christian social circles, I often say that there is one thing we all must do and it’s pretty simple—behave. Just behave and stay out of trouble. Easy, right? 

I have a son named Silas (yes, a good biblical name because we are good, solid Christians). A number of years ago when he was around 1 and our daughter was around 3, our daughter was not quite able to say her “S’s” and “L’s” so it came out “baby-itis.” 

That is why behaving isn’t so easy after all. Because of that stinkin’ “itis” in all of us. That disease, that thing we call sin. 

When I was growing up, I remember sitting in a class and learning about “venial” sins and “mortal” sins. I grew up believing that there was a gradation of wrongdoings. There was good, there was bad, and there was really ugly. Me lying was bad. Me lusting was worse. And forget about leaving the church. 

This thinking has often infiltrated our thinking about our faith. There’s “dos and don’ts” that get tiring. There’s “dos and don’ts” that are boring. Any humor is sucked out of our proverbial grace balloon when we contemplate how we “ought” to live.

This, friends, is called “expectations.” We have an ideal for what our lives should look like, for what faith should look like, and for how God’s people ought to act. I joke that I never set my expectations too high because then I am always surprised when things go well. This is not true, though. In practice, I always get my heart broken because I believe we can all live well when the Holy Spirit is in us. “Quench not the Spirit!” scripture commands. 

Years ago, the 24/7 Prayer movement came up with a Vision Poem. You can read it here(but don’t go there until you plan to be challenged!). The poem begins with:

So this guy comes up to me and says,
“What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?” 
I open my mouth and words come out like this…

And then proceeds to help readers visualize what a life—what a church—sold out to God would look like, including this:

Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve…

The part that always chokes me up, though, is this one line: “With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.” If you are like me, you may have someone in your life who models faith so well that it’s almost as though that person has set the bar for all of us. One of these people for me was Pastor Lon Allison. Lon served at Wheaton Bible Church but prior to this he was my boss at the Billy Graham Center for eight of my years there. 

Lon went to be with Jesus recently after a hard-fought battle with cancer. Upon learning of his death, I wept. I wept because Lon’s love of Jesus and his sold out life to tell others about the great news of the gospel was something that, frankly, I don’t see a lot of anymore. You could almost see Jesus reflected in his eyes when you talked with him. 

Do you know this type of person? Or have you never met this type of person? Deep down inside all of us, I believe, is this sense that we too want to live sold out for something; nay, for Someone. And we want that of others who claim the name of “little Christs” (which, is us Christians). (Read: the church.)

And this, friends, is, I think, why so many of us find ourselves wrestling with the church today. Because our hopes for the church are being quenched. Proverbs puts it this way: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Our anticipation and expectation is muddled. God’s vision for his church to be pure and holy and without blame, for his leaders to be upright and authentic, for his people to be 100 percent sold out to him seems to be dwindling. We cry out, “Give me a reset, please!”

We have a vision for what the church ought to be, and it isn’t. We have a vision for what we ought to be, and we aren’t. It’s the “itis” over and over again. 

Do you know, though, friends, where our hopes are never dashed? In Jesus. 

And this is where I circle back to the question, “How has your view of God changed as a result of your own disappointment, disengagement, anger, or fear (or a combination!) with the church?”

We are never out of danger when it comes to molding God into our image—or the church’s image. But the clay simply cannot usurp the maker. When we wrestle with the church, our view of God is forced into one of two camps, for the bigness of the problem will not allow us to stay on status quo for too long when thinking about God. Either, one, our view of God diminishes as we consider how poorly his church often reflects him. Or, two, our view of God expands as we consider how he is so much “other” than us “human-itits” who are filled with sin. 

A.W. Tozer is my favorite author ever. I will talk about him a lot. If you haven’t read his prophetic and inspiring book Knowledge of the Holy, don’t delay! In it, Tozer writes, “What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” What are the first descriptives for you? Holy? Kind? Patient? Powerful? Gentle? Wise? Near? Far? 

Tozer continues:

The gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at any given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.

Before we go further, friends, take some time to truly ask yourself what you conceive God to be like. This is the foundational question before all questions about the church, for in this question lies the foundation for us moving forward. 

Next week, I’d love to tell you a bit more about how this God can still love his church—and us—“itis” and all. In the meantime, if you are up for it, shoot me an emailand let me know how your disappointments with the church have impacted how you view God. I’d love to hear your story.