A Fresh Perspective - 09/21/07

Most of us come at life expecting everything to work. We have been indoctrinated to believe that is the way life is. When it doesn't, we are not only disappointed, we feel like we have been wronged. We have come to think of it as a right. How dare my automobile not start? Why should I be put on hold? How could I not get a promotion? Some preachers tell us that we should pray for health and wealth and claim them by faith.

This explains why in affluent countries like our own so many of us live in a quasi-depressed state - discouraged, frustrated, complaining that life (or God) has let us down. People in poorer countries, I am told, tend to be happier than those of us in affluent countries. This confuses us because we look at their constant struggles to merely survive and we think, "What do they have to be happy about?"

Franciscan priest Richard Rohr tells about visiting the Home for the Destitute and Dying in Jamaica. People lay in rags and disease was rampant. Rohr thought, "How can people live this way?" Yet they seemed to be doing okay. He asked one woman, "Can I do anything for you?" She replied, "Oh, just recite a psalm for me, Father, just recite a psalm." Rohr says, "And here this big Scripture man couldn't think of a psalm. This humble lady picked out my obvious embarrassment. Here I am, the great priest, coming to help her, and I can't even remember a psalm by heart. She sees it in my face and starts singing Psalm 23. ‘Just join in with me, Father. You just come along.'"

This affirms what the Apostle Paul discovered by means of a "thorn in the flesh," namely, that the saving power of the gospel is most clearly evident through human weakness and failure, rather than in human greatness and glory. This is what Paul calls "the message of the cross" (1 Cor. 1:18).

Too often traditional Christianity reduces the gospel to a set of beliefs to be accepted. The cross of Christ is viewed as the means of dealing with the guilt/punishment of sin and the sinner's responsibility is proclaimed to be that of accepting the cross as God's arrangement for getting to heaven.

The cross, however, represents the way of surrender, sacrifice and service that Jesus demonstrated through his life. It is not merely something to be accepted; it is a way of life to be emulated. This is why, as Paul says, the cross is "the wisdom and power of God". By dying to our selfish ego and taking up the cross (the way of love, the way of self-giving for the good of others), we experience the saving power of Christ that transforms us into more God-like persons.

Chuck Queen is Senior Pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, Frankfort (www.ibcfrankfort.com); he welcomes your comments at cqueen@fewpb.net. Look for "A Fresh Perspective" every Friday.