A Final Plea

What is it in your life that makes you feel significant or gives you purpose? What aspect of who you are, what you do, produce, or create, if taken away, would leave you feeling completely void of value?

I didn’t get this from reading the Greek Septuagint and you might not find this in any commentary, but I think I finally understand why John’s seemingly out of place or cut-off thought at the end of 1 John is there.

“Children, keep yourselves from idols.”

John had been persuading the reader that Jesus is the Son of God, that God is love, that we are to love God and love others, and then for the climactic finish – “Children, keep yourselves from idols.” Really John? What’s going on here?

D.A. Carson defines idolatry this way: “Instead of wanting God, you want the thing which de-gods, God.”

John spends all this time talking about Jesus as the Son of God, what it looks like to follow Him, and the abundance of life that comes from having Jesus in our lives. And not like a dashboard Jesus that we sprinkle on our lives for good luck, but an all-encompassing Jesus that shines light on everything in our lives and changes and reorders EVERYTHING. HE, is our everything.

That is why it’s so offensive to God and so dangerous, when anything besides Jesus becomes the center, or becomes God.

While most of us probably don’t have Buddhas in our home that we worship, idolatry is much, much more discrete than this and thus, all the more deadly.

How many of us can’t put down our work when we get home because it’s what drives us and gives us value? How many of us, when working a job that’s “below” what we feel like we’re capable of, want to wear a sign that boasts of our accolades or find a way to make sure people know that we’re “better” than the other under-achievers working here? How many of us derive our value from our children and trying to raise them up right? Write my name next to most of these things.

Carson puts this more subtle kind of idolatry this way. “We find our self identity NOT in being God’s creature, but in any other person, institution, value system, ritual” – job, ministry, ability – “anything so that God cannot be heard, cannot be allowed to make his ultimate claim as our Creator and Judge.”

I used to think that I had this down, but I’ve realized lately that, most days, my identity, my significance – my hope, is in anything but Jesus Christ. My job, my social standing, my abilities, my knowledge – all of these things compete for my attention and to be what gives me value. And when that doesn’t lead to pride, it ends in a kind of depression because of my perceived shortcomings in those areas.

John knows the deception of these things, but he also points us toward the solution.

Jesus.

Just Jesus.

“Blessed are we that we might be called children of God.”

God has chosen us, rescued us in the person of Jesus Christ, and adopted us as sons. John is trying to magnify this and show us that this is where real identity, value, significance and life are found.

After this description of God that should grip our hearts, John simply closes with a plea to put our focus here and rid ourselves of every idol and ruinous thought or idea that will only distract us from loving Jesus Christ, finding our identity in Him alone and being freed to love and serve others as He has us.

And thank God for this truth, for apart from Him I am absolutely worthless. This, more than anything else, I desire to be true of me and make part of the very fabric of who I am. -CK

*D.A. Carson quotes taken from his recent book, Scandalous.

Validation

I’ve never really been all that great at anything, ever. I was an average high school basketball player, a below-average football player, and just better enough than most of my peers at several other things to maintain a sense of pride and self-worth, one which gave me a deceptive sense of significance and value at the time but has also been a driving, destructive force in my life, now that I’ve recognized it. I never really thought there were significant things from my childhood that have deeply impacted me today, but as I look back, there are fingerprints from my past all over my insecurities and weaknesses.

The same stupid reasons I played football in high school – to gain status, to feel like I was part of something bigger, to please people and feel like a more significant person – are the same reasons I still do a lot of things. I was never particularly good at basketball either, but I needed it in my life to feel like I wasn’t just taking up space in this world and so people would value me.

We all have similar stories from our childhoods I’m sure, and continue to do the same thing to this day, whether we recognize it or not. Whether it’s our skill at something, our charismatic personality, or otherwise, we all have something we use to build ourselves up, something we use to validate ourselves.

Probably once a week and in some environments more than others, I leave a social interaction or a performance or work situation feeling “off” or even depressed because I didn’t feel like I’d left the impression that I’d wanted. I can almost still hear the middle school kids laughing at me in the corner and talking over all the things that aren’t quite right about me as I leave those interactions. My value doesn’t even come from what THEY think about me but what I think they think about me.

Despite many different seasons of brokenness in my short time as a Christian, I have never been more aware of my need for Jesus than I am right now. Not just because of the sin in my life, or my need for the Spirit’s power in my life and ministry, or even because of my growing awareness of the imperfection of even my closest relationships, though all of those are incredibly true.

But because I am a woefully incomplete person with a complete lack of identity and worth without Jesus Christ.

This makes the Gospel incredibly beautiful but incredibly messy at the same time. Because the longer I’m alive, the more I realize my need for my identity to be completely wrapped up in Jesus and it takes a large amount of pain and many humbling experiences to enter into those areas of my life.

But every once in awhile I also get to experience the life, joy and freedom that comes from being hidden with Christ - the value of who I am not being dependent on my job, my relationships, or anything else, but by putting my faith in Jesus and in the power of His death and resurrection to forgive my sins and give me value as a person, simply because I am a chosen son of my Creator God. And though the way of the Cross is difficult, what a wonderful alternative this is to trying to make my own way and clumsily attempting to validate myself.

“For He chose us in Him to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ – to the praise of his glorious grace.” Ephesians 1:3-4

-I will continue to explore this idea of identity and value in upcoming posts. To hear more about what the Gospel is all about and how it’s changed my life, you can find a short story about my background here, http://uwsi.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/chris-story/ .

Experiencing the Gospel

The Gospel is IN everything, it CHANGES everything, and it IS everything.

It’s everywhere we look if we can only perceive it;

In our personal lives, our jobs, and our relationships,

In the people we see, the challenges we face, and the faults we find in ourselves,

In the sun and the rain, the light and the darkness, and the calm and the storm.

It can change everything in our lives if we only let it;

Our marriages, friendships, and hearts,

Our struggles, pain, and hopelessness,

Our hopes, our dreams, and aspirations.

There is nothing without the Gospel, it is everything;

It is a game-changer, something that should alter every aspect of how we think, live, and love,

We simply can’t experience the Gospel and go on with our lives as usual,

It demands all of our hearts and is the only hope we have.

In the next 10 entries or so, I will explore different ways that I have experienced the Gospel – in my own life, as I’ve seen it play out in others, in art and culture, and so on. Whether you’re an avid Christian or haven’t been to church in years, I hope that these entries are honest, interesting, and vulnerable enough to warrant reading every day or every once in awhile.

I don’t claim to be a scholar, theologian, or anything of the sort, so you may disagree with some of my ideas. And that’s fine. All I ask is that you give me grace and dialogue with me to help me see things from your point of view or to correct my wrong ideas.

So bookmark this site, send a link to your friends, subscribe as a follower so you can be notified of updates, or simply check back from time to time. I hope you will find that it’s worth your time and helps you to see and experience God and his Gospel in new and profound ways. -CK