Dead Faith.

Jul 12

For most of my life I was taught, and fully believed, that as a Jesus Follower I was meant to be about the gospel and the gospel alone. In the circles I was raised in it was always and only about Jesus and his saving grace for my soul. After that it was honestly a bit fuzzy when it came to real people problems. Mostly things like depression were talked about in whispers. Grief was largely not a part of my life until I lost a baby as an adult and the answer to poverty was the answer to everything else - Jesus.

Before you label me a heretic (Evangelical Christians I am looking at you) I still believe the answer to our greatest, deepest need is Jesus. I have been enough places and seen enough hardship to know that life is hard for everyone, harder even for some than others by no fault of their own, and God offers soul healing here on earth and a perfect life forever in heaven. God does care about the state of our soul more than the state of our bodies, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about what happens in the here and now. Those real people problems that we all deal with, he sees them, but I am getting ahead of myself.

Being a right and wrong, black and white type of person I decided at a young age that Jesus must be the only answer to our real human problems. Depression, forget medication or counseling -Jesus. Eating disorder? Jesus. Poverty? Well all I had to offer in that situation was Jesus. And hear me please, each of these situations that I have mentioned and the millions more that I haven’t, Jesus is relevant in them.

In Matthew 28 Jesus tells his followers to go into all the world and make disciples. He spent three years teaching through word and action how someone who takes his name should show up in the world and now he is telling his closest friends to go and replicate themselves. It was their mandate (and ours too, if we follow Jesus) to go into all the world and bring the good news of Jesus. First they were to wait for the Holy Spirit (God’s very Spirit to live in man) and then they would have everything they needed to fulfill this last commandment of Jesus on earth.

I think that the disciples understood something that we in the Evangelical church may have forgotten (or maybe it is just me). Jesus is the answer, AND they were the vessel.

I am going to say that again, because I really want you to allow it to sink in.

Jesus is the only answer, and we are the vessel.

As Christ followers and disciple makers we are not to choose one or the other. Gospel OR counseling. The Gospel or alleviating poverty. The Gospel or clean water. The Gospel or grieving. And I could go on and on.

No, the Jesus Follower is to take a lesson from the book of James and do a little bit of both/and. James is really clear that faith without works is dead. You can’t have faith if you don’t have works. They go hand in hand, simultaneously. We can’t talk about the gospel without also caring about people’s grief, or depression, or lack of food, water, clothes and not only caring, but acting. James clarifies his position, in case there was confusion;

“If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” James 2:15-17

In Ronne Rock’s new book “One Woman Can Change the World” (don’t worry men, it isn’t sexist, you can change the world too - and read this book) she tells a story of taking a mission team to Guatemala to work in a children's home. The team brought fun crafts, engaging bible lessons and after the first day they were all pleased with how well what they had planned had been executed. Ronne noticed the two women who ran the home were standing off to the side, observing. She went up to them and after reminiscing over what a great day they had had she asked a simple question she had asked hundreds of times before, we are stopping at the store, do you need anything? The answer humbled her, the women went on to tell Ronne that they hadn’t had any milk or meat in weeks. The mission team had brought Jesus - and this was important, but, that children’s home also needed someone to care enough to buy them some milk. It is both/and.

The first time I heard about both/and was from Jessica Honegger, founder of Noonday Collection. She started the #choosingand hashtag a few years ago on instagram and I was appalled. She said that we could care about fair trade and shop at Target. I could hardly handle the supposed inauthenticity of it all. Wasn’t “choosing and” giving less power to what was really important? Was I watering down my voice? I thankfully learned that ‘choosing and’ is a healthy, grace-filled way to live life. I can love my children and need a break from them. Needing a break doesn’t mean I love them less, it may mean I love them more.

This truth must be applied to the way we walk out our faith, and it is crucial as we become people of justice who have a genuine respect for others. Choosing to say that Jesus is the only way AND he cares about your depression so much that he would have you take steps towards healing by seeing a counselor is not watering down the gospel, it is enforcing it. It is affirming that Jesus, who loves human beings, chose to use us to reveal himself to a world that needs him. That we are conduits of his presence, his peace, his promises, his provision. You and me, Jesus Follower. That is what it is to have faith and works. To go into all the world and be a disciple maker.

When I was in elementary school most of what I learned in science went over my head (Sorry teachers!). But, I remember the battery experiment. When the right wires touched the battery in the right places, power turned on a light bulb, energy happened! It was magical. It wasn’t the wires, but the wires connected to the power source that produced the result.

Friends, Jesus is yesterday, today and forever the power source. End of story, period. AND he asks us to connect to him and be a conduit for his power, peace, love, provision - everything he is to people who need to know him.

When I first started talking about human trafficking, honestly, I thought Christians caring and joining me in this endeavor was a no brainer. How in the world could people who read their Bible, who claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ not get behind an effort that would put works to our faith? That would show people this Jesus we so diligently worship?

To this day, I don’t have a great answer for why the church has been the last group of people to support anti trafficking work and the first to avoid my eyes or give me side eye when I enter a space. Or maybe I have too many answers for this already too long post. But I do think it might be a seed planted in the false idea that if we aren’t handing out a tract with the four steps to salvation, or the Romans Road, or the cross over the great divide if we aren’t leading with the Gospel, then we aren’t fulfilling the Great Commission.

I am not sure if this belief is an honest mistake, or an excuse to not do hard things like enter into spaces of injustice. That really is between individuals and their Creator God. I will just leave you with the words of Jesus.

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets.” Matthew 7:12

Sounds like faith and works to me.

Let’s scrap the dead faith, and start living out the kind of faith that is alive and active with a little bit of both/and. This is a big step in the journey of becoming Jesus Followers whose lives are marked by justice.