I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine.
I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant.
I want ecstasy, not transformation.
I want the warmth of the womb not a new birth.
I want about a pound of the eternal in a paper sack.
I’d like to buy $3 worth of God, please.
Wilbur Rees
It doesn’t require all that much to be a church member. The time commitment isn’t too bad; at its worst, we’re talking about three hours on Sunday and one on Wednesday (and you can easily cut it down to just 45 minutes on Sunday if you play your cards right). The cost isn’t bad either; nobody really knows how much you drop in the plate. Outside of church, all you have to do is avoid doing anything to publicly embarrass the church. It’s not a bad hobby.
But what does it take to be a disciple? That’s where things get tough, talking about denying ourselves and taking up crosses and being different from the world. That’s not really the life that most of us signed up for. It’s kind of like signing up for the safety patrol at school and finding yourself a Navy SEAL. We want to be Christians, but do we have to be fanatics about it?
Men have turned Christianity into a religion focused on gathering in a building on Sunday and doing certain things the right way. Success is measured by how many people we can gather to do things the same way that we do them. Evangelism is convincing people to come and do things the way we do them. Good church leaders organize the Sunday meetings well and make sure that the place that we meet is well taken care of. For many, that is what Christianity is about.
If we consider this to be Christianity, then we have to feel that Jesus really didn’t do a very good job of setting things up. Couldn’t He have spent at least a little time talking to us about how to do this Sunday “worship service” since it’s the center of our religion? Couldn’t He have spelled out a little better the exact rules for songs, for prayers and for taking the Lord’s Supper? Better yet, couldn’t He have left us at least one sample order of worship? Why did He spend so much of His time talking about other things?
If we want to be the Lord’s church, we have to be about the Lord’s business. If we are going to be imitators of Christ, it only makes sense that we are going to try and do the things He did. We will want to talk about the things He talked about and concentrate on the things He concentrated on.
Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23) That’s every day. Not weekly. Not twice a week. Daily.
It’s all or nothing. Total commitment. We are His or we aren’t. God wants an intimate, daily relationship with us. He compares it again and again to a marriage. He doesn’t want to be a part of our lives; He wants to be our lives.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30) Not some. Not part. All.
Not $3.00 worth. Not one day a week’s worth. Not “inside the church building” worth. God wants all of us, every day. That’s what it is to be a disciple. That’s what it is to be a Christian.
Someone said that instead of focusing on being the right church, we should focus on being the right kind of Christians. The gathering of the right kind of Christians will be the right church.
$3 worth of God? Why don’t you supersize that?
On June 5th, Tim said this, “I’m considering slowing down my blogging schedule,” Sometimes we get weary when we can’t see any results of our work, but that doesn’t mean there are no results. as you said $2
worth ain’t enough. anything less than all you can do ain’t enough.
Yeah, believe it or not, I can’t get organized enough to set up a revised blogging schedule!
It’s easy to understand, definitely. I wish it was easier to DO, though!
Excellent thoughts.
first time on and I loved your writing thanks for sharing.
Carolyn! It’s a thrill to see you here in the Kitchen. Dare I confess that I originally wrote this for the Stockdale bulletin? {blush}
Tim your thoughts are excellent! I might take issue with a couple lines from Mr. Reese’s poem from which you quoted (which I hadn’t heard until now).
“…just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine…I wantt ecstasy, not transformation. I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth.”
I understand and agree with the author’s point (that you brought out beautifully in your thoughts). So many of us want only the emotional experience of God without the shake-up in our lives. What concerns me is an element in Christianity that wants to minimize or laugh off the ecstasy–the “warmth of the womb”– as being ridiculous and irrelavant. So many Bible writers talk about the way ther herts soar, the peace that calms their fears, when the contemplate God. What’s important to remember is to let those feelings lead us to change, to discipleship, rather than just selfishly using them as a drug to momentarily thrill our ohterwize spirit-less lives.
I think sometimes we’re so afraid of sounding too much like New Age thinking, that we go to far the other way into Elightenment-era naturalism. As one of my favorite preachers often says, “The truth usually lies between extremes.” Again I’m not taking issue with anything you said, just qualifying the comments of the man you quoted. God bless you for your work!
Thanks Jason. I guess I write those concerns off a bit to poetic license; surely there is a bit of hyperbole at work.
I agree with you, though, that emotional experiences do have a place in the Christian’s life. I think they have to come as a by-product, a value added if you will. We seek God and get those experiences; if we seek those experiences, we come up empty.
Thanks for the comments!
And if you’re new here, welcome to the Kitchen!
Grace and peace,
Tim
Matt 7:21-27 comes to mind.
21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven. 22 “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ 23 “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. 25 “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. 26 “And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand. 27 “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.”
NASB
We can do many things in Christ’s name, but if our heart is not right, and we are not doing what God wants, then it is all meaningless. Our love for Him must be first, then many blessings will come to us – not because we worked for them, but because we gave ourself to Him and wanted to please Him. The emotional highs will come, but also the lows and we must accept them both.