Drowning in an ocean of forgetfulness

greaterthings:

mackenzieyourfriendzie:

Wonderful, right? Yes. Hands down. Yes. Amazing. The best I ever had.

I don’t want to do this. I feel like I have to get this off my chest. It’s not because I want to, it’s because I have to! I don’t want to be the guy who only posts cynical blogs because those are the things he needs to let out, and makes all the people who read them depressed, I really don’t. But I have to do this. (I also don’t want to be the guy who apologizes for just about everything he says. But come on, I’ve said some things that originally sounded like heresy. And this may be the worst thing, coming up. So I’m sorry for apologizing.)

What if this drowning in an ocean of forgetfulness ends up being what leaves us in hell? What if this attribute of forgiveness transforms itself into an attribute of our condemnation?

Oh gosh. I’m going to be up for a while. I say one thing, and now I’ll be typing for an hour to atone for it, to explain myself, to get to a point where you don’t automatically discard everything I say as blasphemy.

What if the very thing that is our salvation ends up convicting us to a lifetime sentence?

I know, the conservatives reading this must be up in arms. I’m sure. I don’t want to step on any toes. Let me explain myself.

Growing up, in a Lutheran church, I had the message pounded into me that I am forgiven. Which is great news. The first time I understood, I celebrated, went out, had a couple drinks, and a crazy night on the town (Not really). When I understood the idea of my salvation, I rejoiced! The Message is something meant to be received with an open heart, and hopefully leads to rejoicing.

And rejoice I did. I loved it, I loved Him, and I lived it out. But there’s a point you reach. I’ve been hearing the same things for 18 years now. I’ve reached a point where it’s not new. The Gospel, the greatest surprise in the history of the world, is no longer surprising. The idea that the God of the Universe, the creator, became a human, a complete, full-blooded, dirty human, who suffered death, is offensive to Islam. The idea that the Messiah was “just another man” who was hung on a tree with common criminals is offensive to Judaism. Christianity is an offensive religion. It is ridiculous that the thing that I think of when I read Mark isn’t “How ridiculous is it that Jesus came to Earth to die for me,” but it’s “How can I possibly believe that something can be one and three at the same time?” It’s old news. The Good News is old news to me. Which results in something catastrophic. I’m drowning in a sea of forgetfulness.

Casting Crowns says that in a song. And I like that song. East to West, it’s a good song. Listen to it. And I know they mean it as a good thing. We are overwhelmed in forgetfulness. Which I agree is a great thing, and without His forgetfulness, we are, to put it bluntly, screwed over. So I thank the Good Lord Almighty every day for that.

But, being humans, we have a tendency to distort the Message. We take the Gospel, which is a piece of literature that has been masterfully crafted into the foundation of our faith, and turn it on its side. We turn it upside down.

For example, I have a question. If you answer this, you win. I give up. You’re right, I’m wrong, end of story.

Can you give me the verse in the Bible where Jesus says, “Accept me as your Lord and Personal Savior to gain access into heaven?” Can you find that for me? I’m pretty sure Jesus says he is the only way to Heaven, but he never says that simply by saying certain magic words will you be accepted into Heaven. I’m pretty sure that our goal as Christians isn’t to convince people to say magic words and then leave it at that to be “saved.”

It just happened. I can see it in your face. I lost you. Well, that’s too bad. Goodbye conservative America, you probably want to cut yourself off from me right about now. I’m sorry you feel that way. I’m just saying.

Maybe when Jesus is telling you to follow him, he is actually calling you to follow him. Follow his ways. Maybe his way is a lifestyle, not a speech. I mean, Jesus did get kinda upset at the Pharisees and such, those who were all talk and no action. Maybe saying those magic words won’t get you into heaven. Maybe it’s really all about living a lifestyle that announces your obedience. Maybe Martin Luther took it too far when he decided Christianity is not about works at all.

And there goes the Lutheran population. Goodbye, it was nice to have you reading for a while. I’m gonna miss you guys. Stop by and visit sometime.

James says “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such a faith save him?” (James 2:14) Maybe the answer to that question is “no good at all,” and not “oh well, maybe we should totally discard this canonical writing.” Maybe deeds to play a role in salvation. Maybe, as James says in 1:27, “Religion that God our father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Notice how he started with looking after those less fortunate, and not by faith? Don’t get me wrong, faith is important, but “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone” (James 2:24). That’s right. Maybe the Bible doesn’t teach that simply accepting Jesus as your personal savior (What the hell does that phrase even mean?) is the way to heaven.

That’s my controversial statement. There you have it. If you are still reading, then thank you for your attention. I appreciate it. I really do.

So now, I made it back to my topic. I believe I said something along the lines of, “What if the very thing that is our salvation ends up convicting us to a lifetime sentence?”

Here’s why. Have you ever grown stagnant? Don’t tell me you’ve never experienced Cheap Grace. We all have, whether you would like to admit it or not. You are weighing the option of doing something, and on one hand, you realize it is sin. That means it’s no good, and shouldn’t be done. But you justify it. Or sometimes you say, “I’ll be forgiven for it anyways.” Then you do it. You sin.

It doesn’t matter, right? You’re too busy drowning in sea of forgetfulness to realize that maybe it does. First of all, the decision you made has an effect on your relationship with God. That’s not good, but a sacrifice you’re willing to make to sin. Second, the reason the Law was put forward in the beginning wasn’t just so we can have Jesus die for us, but it was for our own benefit. Sinning isn’t good for you. It gets you in bad situations. And it doesn’t just stop. And finally, you’re hurting yourself, and most likely you are hurting someone else. Some other person is on the receiving end of your sinfulness.

Which is why the sea of forgetfulness gets back to us. God is so forgiving, that we are forgiven for everything we do. We face no punishment (other than direct results) from our sin. And we take advantage of that. Oh, we take advantage of that, and we sin like nobody’s business. All because we can justify it. All because we are taking advantage of a sacrifice. All because we are too selfish to actually think about our actions.

But do you see it? Do you see how suddenly we can turn something that is the greatest thing in the history of mankind into something that hurts us? I remember a conversation I had with a friend before I left for college, about how some of his friends didn’t believe in God, and he was having trouble believing the fact they could be sent to hell. Which I love the fact that he cares for them so much, but we live in a society that classifies it as “God sending his children to Hell because they screwed up once.” Which it’s not. Not at all. But my answer to him at the time was that they only had to believe in Jesus as their savior, maybe get baptized for good measure, and they were set for life. Fire insurance, if you will. But looking back on it, I get scared thinking about that conversation. Because I really believed that.

There was a time in my life when I truly believed that no matter what you did, if you repent at one point in your life, you are set forever. I believed you could accept Jesus as a 20 year old, and then renounce his name for the next 100 years until you die as the oldest person in the world, and still get into heaven. But the thing that scares me is that I believed it last summer, and I wasn’t exactly in the dark on every issue of Christianity. Only since I came to Azusa have I realized that the equation isn’t Grace + Grace = Safety. I realized things like the Lord’s Prayer can actually be a condemnation of yourself, if you are saying “Forgive us/me as we/I forgive others.”

And some people reading this may believe that still. Which I understand, and I respect your belief. And I agree that if someone on their deathbed accepts the grace of Jesus Christ, they are forgiven, and all is well with the world, and birds sing, and Satan is vanquished and Jesus is King. I agree. But don’t think that you can just go about your life, living wantonly, recklessly, and receive salvation either way. This scares me because I believed it, and I think some other people out there believe it. And if they believe it, maybe they really are living that way. Maybe they are drowning in a sea of forgetfulness. Maybe they’re helplessly falling victim to the world around them.

I had the hardest time with this. I mean, I feel as though I comprehend it, and I still struggle with it. Following Jesus isn’t an easy thing, and He never claimed that it would be easy. And I’m not going out and claiming we need to sell indulgences to atone for our sins and those sins of our ancestors and friends. I’m not claiming that Christianity should be all about religion and not about relationship. I’m simply claiming that we need a balance, and some of the people I have witnessed have been tipping a little bit to the grace side as opposed to the deeds side.

But I think we need to realize that faith without works really is dead. I think we need to understand that we can’t sleep through our lives. We can’t go through the motions for 70 years and claim at the pearly gates that we know Jesus. Because there’s the possibility that when we get there, we’ll say we know Him, but Jesus will look at us, and search our eyes, and search our heart, and say, “No. You knew My doctrine. You never knew Me.” And maybe our false sense of security will lure us into stagnancy, instead of actively pursuing a relationship with Christ, with deeds and faith working hand in hand. Maybe the very thing that is our salvation ends up convicting us to a lifetime sentence. Maybe we really are drowning in a sea of forgetfulness.

Incredibly thought provoking…

In John 11:25 Jesus tells the sisters of Lazarus “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Like Mack says, there are no special or magic words to say that get us into Heaven. In Romans 3 verse 22 Paul says “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” Ephesians 2:8 states “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.”

However, James 2: 14-26 is interesting when it comes to the idea that all we need to do is believe in Jesus to be saved. It almost seems that James is contradicting Jesus in that He is the only way to the Father. Its like Jesus is saying “by knowing me, an by believing in me alone, you can find salvation.” Paul affirms this in Romans. But James seems to be saying “knowing Jesus is not simply enough.” When I read this passage however I don’t see James telling us that we are saved by the acts we commit here on earth. I think maybe that could be the first level glance at the passage. But below that surface level I see someone so in love with Jesus that he is saying that we have the greatest responsibility of all. You see, James talks about Abraham and how he did amazing things of which made him “righteous”. But the thing is, Abraham would not have done these things if he didn’t know and love God. Paul writes an entire chapter in Romans (chapter 4) in which the topic is Abraham Justified through Faith. Not actions but faith.

All of this seems to be very confusing.

But you see, its not about what we do here on earth that brings us to our salvation. The only thing that can lead to our salvation is knowing and loving Jesus. However, to really know Jesus would be to love Him so much that we would would never want to abuse His incredible forgetful grace! To truly know Jesus would result in the actions that lead Abraham to what James calls righteousness.

Our actions mean nothing without the reasons behind them. God loves seeing us care for the widowed and homeless. But the thing is, these are simply actions. A person could very easily be doing these things to appear as righteous.  If a kid were to come up to me at a funeral and ask me if their grandfather is in Heaven, I would give the kid the only answer I truly know. That answer would be I honestly have no idea. Even if they responded with “but he was such a good man, he gave to the poor and looked after those who were weak,” I still would not change my answer. Because I am not Jesus. I cannot possibly look into this man’s heart and know why he did the things he did and pass judgement like that. Because its not based on our actions. Its all about our heart and where its at.

So yes, I do believe that someone who knows Jesus at the age of 20 and completely renounces Him for the next hundred years could make it to Heaven. I am not fit to make that judgment to say for sure, but it is possible. Their actions might not be an accurate representation of where their heart is at. Thats what it means to be human doesn’t it? To want so desperately to do good but to slip and fall time and time again. However, I think that to truly know Jesus, to love Jesus with all of your heart, would result in an inability to not do the actions Jesus did here on earth. Just like little children we looked up to our parents and loved them so much we copied everything they did, we would do the same with Jesus if we love Him the way He wants us to. So with that in mind I think that it would be impossible to deny the actions and renounce God for even a week.

“But don’t think that you can just go about your life, living wantonly, recklessly, and receive salvation either way.” If we really love Jesus and know Him and He lives in us, then we should never want to live this way.

This pretty much clearly explains what I have been thinking about for quite awhile. People seem to think that believing is simply acknowledging his existence. I won’t waste time reiterating what was said, but thank you.