Four Responses Christians Have To Hearing Christ’s “Good News”

Nearly four years ago I began blazing a new path in my Christian walk.  Although I hadn’t quite put it into words, as I sat in the back of church staring blankly as others swayed with lifted hands to yet another Hillsong tune, I thought to myself, “Is this all there is?  Telling people about you so if they say yes they get to join the club and go to heaven and if they say no, well, they go to hell.  In the meantime, here’s the club manual, read it!  And don’t miss the weekly club meetings.”

Surely You, the God who made all of creation wouldn’t want us to be this boring.

Then I read a book by Brian Zahnd called Beauty will Save the World and everything changed.  That started the snowball rolling and led me to reading Peter Rollins, Greg Boyd, Richard Rohr, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and others.  These guys opened up the Bible in a way that was much more in line with who Jesus was and what he was on about.

The “so-so news” had suddenly become “Good News” again!

Here was a group of Christian leaders who were seeing Christians needed to be “saved” as much as anyone.

And I was one of them. I was a Christian pastor who got “saved”!  Not from hell, but from a mind numbing religious system

However my experience in the last few years has been that Christians respond to this Good News of Jesus differently.  Some seed falls on hard soil, some on a soft heart, and some somewhere in between.

So here are 4 responses I have seen to Christians hearing “the Good News”.  (Granted, these are charictures and generalisations.  People are admittedly more complex and nuanced than this but these 4 responses are in the ball park)

The “Double Downer”:.  In poker, sometimes you get a hand at the start you think will be good so you bet high.  As the hand develops though you start to have your doubts; perhaps this hand isn’t what I thought it was going to be.  Then you look and see the amount of money you have already invested and the thought of folding and waiting for the next hand becomes just to difficult to consider.  Instead, you steel yourself, raise the bet, and pray that the sheer confidence you pretend to have will silence your own inner doubt while creating it in your opponents.

It usually doesn’t work…

Likewise I seem to encounter a lot of folk that the real Good News is just to much for them to handle.  Most of them, if they are honest, have their own doubts.  They wonder why the Christian life that was supposed to deliver freedom seems to just create a new set of chains.  Yet they have invested so much of their time, money, and more importantly, their identity into the evangelical “system” that anyone who threatens that system, even if it brings Good News, is a threat.  This is especially hard for Christian leaders.  So rather than admit the hand they are holding is not what they thought it was going to be, they silence the doubt, raise the stakes, and hope if they expose the heresy of Rob Bell loud enough, they might eventually win the hand in the end.

It doesn’t work…

The Jettison God Guy: Some folk just end up jettisoning God all together.  For whatever reason, they have seen behind the curtain of the institutional church system and realize it wasn’t so much about the Great and Powerful Oz as it was about a system pulling levers…and legs.  Either because they are mad, or disillusioned, or simply just don’t give a crap anymore about the games people play in church, these folk find their new journey as atheists.  My brother is in this group and you can get his story here.  I’ve gotten to know quite a few people in this group and here is the irony; since they stopped becoming Christians, many of them have become more “Christ-like”.  So there you go…

The “Civilian”:  Some Christians respond positively to the Good News…but it kinda just stops there.   They know the present system has it’s flaws but at least, they figure, it’s already set up…“and you know, the worship’s good and the kids like it.”  The “Civilian” has their doubts about hell, atonement, church structure, judgement and grace.  They secretly read a book by Brian McLaren or sneek off to hear Rob Bell speak without telling their home group leader …but that’s about where the journey ends. The present system gives them a security, and more importantly, a certainty that keeps them from moving forward.  The best analogy I can think of is the town folk on the East Coast of America in the 19th century.  They knew that the journey West offered freedom, opportunities, and a new life.  But they also knew that it came with less structure, less security, and less trappings of certainty.  On top of that people who took that journey got arrows shot at them.  “Thanks but no thanks, we’ll just stay here in cozy Boston and read your exciting dispatches from the front.”

The “Pioneer”:  Still the “Good News” is heard by other Christians and they can’t help but respond and run with it.  Admittedly, I put myself in this category.  Four years ago I sat in the back of a church and hoped no one called on me to speak. I had nothing to give but “yesterday’s mana”.  It had been so long since the “good news” had been really “GOOD NEWS” that when I finally did hear it I couldn’t shut up.  I suddenly wanted to speak at any gathering that will have me about a Jesus that reconciles all creation through his love, mercy, and forgiveness.  To share about a God gives us the tools through his Holy Spirit to be agents of restoration in the world.  To be part of a new way of ordering society that no longer created an “us” vs. “them”.  And to declare a Good News that says you don’t have to be afraid anymore.  Sure, you get arrows shot at you from time to time. Sometimes it’s a nasty comment, sometimes it’s the shunning by friends, but when I get a little down about those things there will suddenly be an e-mail from a stranger who thanks me for sharing this Good News with them and for the freedom they discovered…

… and then every arrow was worth it!

The number of pioneers are increasing, but there is still so much work left to do.

Peace,

Steve