I gotta be honest with you. I cannot stand weak people. I mean, come on! Stand up for something and don’t back down. For the love!
That probably makes me sound really harsh but stay with me and I’ll get there. First, I want to tell you a story from my own life to illustrate what I’m talking about. Anyone who knows me knows I typically have no problem voicing an opinion or taking a stand on something. I may get crushed for taking that stand and my stands have not always been the right thing, but you get the point. This is genetic, I think. It’s in my blood. My family has never really been a back down kinda people. But, the story…So, if you’ve been reading anything I’ve written, you know I was a police officer (it feels like eons ago). I was up for promotion at one point and had to sit for an interview before the chief of police and the command staff. My chief asked me what the one character flaw was that was inexcusable for supervisors (in my opinion). I said, “Indecisiveness.” I meant that. The one thing police officers cannot be and most certainly supervisors cannot be is indecisive. Lives hang in the balance. Make a decision. But I also hate cowards. So not only should you make the decision, but you also need to be man enough to stand on that decision. If it was right or wrong, stand on it. Take your praise or take your lumps like a man (or woman). What’s the point? I am sick and tired of meely-mouthed, weak Christians (and my own weakness at times). I am sick of people who are Christian in name only. I am sick of watching those who claim the name of Christ fail to stand for Him and cower to the world. For far too long, Christians have (for the most part) bowed to the culture in this country and in the West and this has got to stop. I remember “back in the day” when I made fun of conservative Christians who called for a boycott of Disney. I’m ashamed to say that I made fun of my dad for that. Well, I’m officially on that train now. It’s time for us to stop cowering, Christians. It’s time for us to worry more about our souls and the souls of our children than our comfort. The truth is that we want our cake and eat it too. We want the comforts without the cost. We have failed to take Jesus seriously when He said things like, “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” (Matthew 12:30) Or, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26) We have failed to take the testimony of the early Christians seriously or even the Lord’s own brother when he said, “Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2:17-26) Enough with the compromise with the world! Enough with us pussyfooting around with sin and our comfort. We have compromised with the world, brothers and sisters! Let us turn away from the filth of the world. Let us repent, lest we be like the Church of Laodicea and hear Christ say to us, “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” (Rev. 3:15-16) I commend to you the 3rd chapter of The Book of Revelation. We quibble and we compromise, and our very souls are at stake, dear brethren. The souls of our children are at stake. Do we love Christ so little that we aren’t even willing to give up our love of our appetites?! Do we not know that eternity is much longer than the 70-80 years we live now? Do we not know that the damnation of Hell will be utter misery and depravation and torture and the absence of all that is Good and Holy and Beautiful?! I want to leave you with a quote by St. Theophan the Recluse. He said, when commenting on the offer that we have of union with God and deification, “Know that there is no middle ground – it is all or nothing.” There is no middle ground. You are in or out. We are either with Him or against Him. We either scatter or sow. We either gain the world or we gain our soul. We cannot have faith without works. We must be hot or cold. There is no middle ground.
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Among the many things that caused me to leave the Protestant tradition was a problem that I began to see with what is called “easy believism.” What that basically means is what I experienced as a child; I was told to say a certain prayer, be baptized and then I was all good. Now, I look back on that and feel like it was kind of a “get out of hell free” card. Once saved, always saved, right?
The problem with that is that it’s not actually a biblical understanding of what salvation is or what it means to be a faithful Christian. There are repeated exhortations in Holy Scripture, specifically the NT, to be faithful, to endure, to keep the faith until the end. In other words, there are things we must do if we are of the Faith. St. Paul says we are to “examine” ourselves to see if we are of the faith in 2 Corinthians 13:5, “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.” And St. Peter exhorts (2 Peter 1:10-11) us to make our calling and election sure by doing “these things,” “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” One of the things that I have found in the historic Church that is profoundly helpful is the practice of asceticism. And it has changed the way I live out the Faith. I have always been drawn to a monastic practice (though I am not a monk) of prayer and asceticism and the early Church did this very well, I feel. I’ve begun to slowly work my way through a book entitled Way of the Ascetics by Tito Colliander and it is fantastic. I want to interact with what I am learning and putting into practice in my own walk with Christ and His Church. Colliander starts right off in Chapter 1, “If you wish to save your soul and win eternal life, arise from your lethargy, make the sign of the Cross and say: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Faith comes not through pondering but through action. Not words and speculation but experience teaches us what God is.” Lethargy. I feel like, in my own life in the past, there has been great lethargy. I depended on a little prayer to “save me” and did little to actually put forth any effort of my own. I love his call to action but not just action for the sake of action alone. No, the call to action is to a lived experience of walking with God. This is a way of life. It is the Way. The first Christians were initially called “followers of the Way” (Acts 9:2). One of the earliest extant Christian writings we have, other than what became the books of the New Testament is The Didache (literally meaning “teaching”). In this work, one of the major themes talked about is the comparison between two “ways” that are called the way of life and the way of death. Following the Way, following Christ should change everything about our lives. And once we change our lives to follow Christ, we cannot let go, we cannot give up. Colliander exhorts us to, “Hold fast to your purpose and do not look back.” Don’t look back. Sounds like something Jesus said when He stated, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62 Jesus says that, if we begin to follow Him, if we put our hand to the plow and look back, we are not fit for the kingdom of God. Not fit. I don’t think Jesus is taking this lightly, but I fear that we do. We are given warnings throughout Holy Scripture of how we are to live and the judgement that comes on those who do not. We must remember that we are no longer our own; we are not even alive in our flesh. As St. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” He didn’t say old things are to be put on a shelf so we can take them down and look at them occasionally. Old things have passed away. They have died. Or, as St. Paul again says in Colossians 3:3, “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Our former selves are dead, and our life is hidden with Christ in God (at least this should be true of us). As Colliander puts it, “You have cast off your old humanity; let the rags lie.” Our lives should be lived with one purpose: to be conformed to the image of the Son (Rom. 8:29). This can only be accomplished by putting on the Lord Jesus (Gal. 3:27) and putting our flesh to death (Rom. 13:14). We must, moment by moment, take up our cross and put our flesh to death and be unified to Christ. Although this sounds impossible, it has already been done! This is the glory of the gospel! Christ has already defeated sin, death and the devil. In Him, our humanity has been redeemed in His own flesh! We have but to walk it out, daily dying to self and putting on the Lord Jesus, walking in His way and finding again the communion with God we lost in the Garden. This is the glory of Christ and ours to share in! Through Christ, our communion with God has been restored and, like our first parents, we can now walk in the cool of the evening of our lives with Him. This is not yet fully realized but one day…oh, one day! In that day, we shall see Him as He is, and we shall be like unto Him! Glory to God! Hold fast to your purpose, beloved, and do not look back. Glory to Thee, our God, glory to Thee! |
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