Those Who Taunt Your Long, Hard Obedience
It's beautiful when God uses our worst mistakes to help others who have failed. The compassion and wisdom we gain during our lowest times help us extend a loving hand to friends who are fighting shame over their own disasters.
However, lately I’ve noticed progressive Christians taking a different approach to failure. While living lives of open indulgence, they shake a knowing finger at those who are sincerely struggling to trust God. And then they accuse them of legalism.
I know how devastating it is to be accused of this, because someone did it to me. The hit came at a time when my husband and I were struggling in marriage, and I was trying so hard to find God’s strength to make good choices for our family. We had lived through a long string of traumas in a short amount of time, and I was exhausted and hurt. Satan had done his job, and I had caught a glimpse of how easy it would be to quit fighting. I had already made some mistakes of the heart, and wasn’t sure I was going to make it through more external challenges unscathed.
It was here that a friend of mine accused me of being proud because of my beliefs in God-given moral standards. Specifically, I believed that God doesn't want His people to have sex before or outside of the covenant of marriage.
As I fought to trust God in my time of darkness, I felt my friend’s condescension and his judgment. He treated me as if I weren’t grown up enough in the faith to understand how grace really worked. He acted like He knew God better than I did because he had found the "freedom" to sleep around while claiming devotion to Christ.
Since then, I’ve noticed this sort of thing happening more and more in postmodern Christianity. Either by open challenges to God’s standards, or by subtle implications, the weary and battered now have to face cynicism and judgment from progressive believers during their most trying times. And often, this judgment comes with a prediction that our messy battles for obedience will be utterly lost.
These judgments are very different from Paul's boasts about his weaknesses. Paul talked about his struggles as a platform for advocating union with Jesus. He didn’t undermine obedience by calling it legalism, he urged his followers to learn obedience as a fruit of their unity with God.
Paul didn’t undermine obedience by calling it legalism, he urged his followers to learn obedience as a fruit of their unity with God.
His confessions weren’t defenses of his own sin, they were a work of transferring glory from himself to God.
In fact, many times, he called the churches out of immorality and indulgence so that they might go deeper into their true identity in Christ. He used the commands of God as a catalyst to propel believers into the sort of dependence that Jesus exhibited on earth. He taught us unity with Christ by showing us what we were incapable of doing on our own.
Today, though, a believer who tries to embrace Paul's sort of discipleship is likely to be accused of pride or performance Christianity.
When I was first hit with this sort of accusation, I was too hurt to think about why it was being directed at me. I had no delusions about my own glory because I had seen my weakness, and I was staring temptation square in the face. I didn't think I was righteous; I knew I wasn't. I had caught a glimpse of what I was capable of doing, and frankly, I was too sore and too scared to be much of a Pharisee.
But as time as passed, I have begun to see why my friend attacked me in the way that he did. These sorts of judgments must be made by people living lives of indulgence. There’s no other way for them to survive the weight of their own choices.
When a Christian decides to chase pleasure no matter what, he has to redefine morality if he is going to continue to claim his faith. He has to find a way to elevate his own choices, reworking the gospel to fit the permissions he has granted himself.
If, during this time, he encounters someone who is trying to lean on grace to find obedience, the friction burns. He has to lash out and condemn, or else he will be convicted of his own defiance against God.
When a Christian decides to chase pleasure no matter what, he has to redefine morality if he wants to continue to claim his faith. He has to find a way to elevate his own choices, reworking the gospel to fit the new religion he has created.
Sometimes this accusation is more subtle than it was in my life. One popular manifestation of the same hostility is the, "When you crash and burn, call me" attitude. Yeah, this may look like some sort of wide lap of grace at first. It may sound like a Ragamuffin blessing, a perpetually open door. But if we take a close look at what is being implied here, it’s not just a tender welcome, it’s a prediction that we will blow it. And depending on the context in which the offer is made, it can also be a judgment against our trembling attempts to hold fast to the commands of Jesus.
I have made so many awful, embarrassing mistakes in my life, but I don’t want anyone else to repeat those mistakes, just so I can feel better about my own story. And as I find ways to talk about my flaws, I don’t take refuge in the fact that my mistakes are common mistakes to make, but in the wonder that Jesus loved me enough to pay for them.
We live in a time when religion is obsessed with selling itself in a simple, consumer-oriented package; however, I’m not responsible for constructing some sort of marketable narrative that resonates with the masses. I’m responsible for telling the world what the Savior has done for one soul, using the real-time failures that I have chosen. No more. No less.
True love doesn't want to bring others down so that shame will have more company. It is not so selfish as this, and it has a more sober, mature understanding of the consequences of sin (even forgiven sin) in real lives. Nor does true love condemn the sincere while they are hanging on their crosses. Love doesn't judge them in their pain or cry out, "When you hurt badly enough, you will also curse God and do what I did, and then you will understand me, and then you will be more grown up than you are now."
Spiritual depth is not some sort of prize obtained solely through a catastrophic moral crash. Depth is obtained by the manner in which a sovereign God chooses to work in each person and by the response of each person to God's works.
It is true that God may allow any one of us to fall hard, and we may grow wise in those failures. But God may also teach us great things while we live a long, lonely, difficult life of sincere obedience.
Just because a pilgrim is struggling with less sensational sins doesn’t mean he or she is learning less about need. You or I may never commit the edgy, fleshy sins that make for one of those prime time religious movies or a hit CCM chorus, but our failures don't have to be spectacular (on the world's scale) for us to learn about our utter dependence on grace.
Let me say this plainly. You don't have to sleep around. You don't have to be an addict. You don't have to be a cynic or a blasphemer to really know what reliance is. If you have done those things, there is grace for you... but you aren't "failing failure" if you haven't. I’m so sorry if postmodern teachers have made your struggles feel somehow less intense because they have compared them to dramatic church-camp stories of sensational sin. And I'm sorry if they have made the sincere deaths you have died to yourself feel like legalism instead of trust.
I’m so sorry if postmodern teachers have made your struggles feel somehow less intense because they have compared them to dramatic church-camp stories of sensational sin. And I'm sorry if they have made the sincere deaths you have died to yourself feel like legalism instead of trust.
Sometimes the quiet struggles that remain year after year are the hardest. Sometimes failing is complex, and private, and ruthless in ways that doers of big, loud, selfish deeds can't begin to understand. God does not till all fields in the same way.
Sometimes the quiet struggles that remain year after year are the hardest. Sometimes failing is complex, and private, and ruthless in ways that doers of big, loud, selfish deeds can't begin to understand. God does not till all fields in the same way.
To know grace, we need to know only how to rely on the person of Jesus with the weaknesses we already have. We only need to have the heart of our self-dependence revealed and to see how that dependence can be replaced with Divine power.
To get us to this point, Jesus chases each sheep differently, writes each story differently, and He will work with you wherever you are right now. No matter what you have or haven't done to this point, you're already messed up enough; you don't have to slam the glass vase of your obedience on a slate floor to qualify for His healing.
If you are in the hard, painful place of dying to self, of holding to a promise of God, of yielding more and more control to your Savior--and if while you are suffering, you are hearing accusations from postmodern teachers who feel threatened by your story because they are living lives of indulgence--please realize that those messages say a lot more about those people than they say about you.
Those teachers don't get to tell your story for you. God hasn't made them your interpreter. You aren't necessarily a legalist who must crash, and it isn’t inevitable that you are going to lose this war you are fighting. It’s quite possible that Jesus will meet you right here in your present battle and carry you the rest of the way. It’s possible that you will learn utter dependence on Christ before you taste the consequences of a gross moral failure that destroys your family.
And besides, here’s what I know about you. You already have crashed a thousand times. All of us have. We already know failure. We already know how deeply our weakness runs.
The judgment you are likely receiving from postmodern Christians as you walk in painful obedience, finding out your own limits and running to God to hold up your arms, is unkind and unfair. And you need to know that when anyone waits eagerly for you to know your own ruin because he has a desire to be the hero of his own narrative, he is being a consumer, not a giver.
So run to Jesus when you hear these taunts. Open your heart before the Living God and ask Him to examine you. Admit your weaknesses and your temptations, and apply the strength He freely gives. Thank God for the struggle that shows you how much you need Him. Receive His love for obedience to a King who is worthy of our entire lives. Fixate on the hope before you. Revel in the Kingdom to come.
Then accept no names for yourself but what He gives you. And remember that a religious sheepskin on the bloodthirst of man is not a Divine commission.