If every person in Myrtle Point who has “tried” following God came to church on the same Sunday, probably every church would be full to overflowing. Many who have tried “the God thing” will tell you up front that it didn’t work. Does following God “work”?
Notice the language of the question. It is interesting that very few say they decided what they had believed wasn’t true. I think a hundred years ago when Darwin, Marx, Freud and biblical higher criticism were rampant, more people deserting their faith would have said they found Christianity is untrue. Today, however, people use the language of a dissatisfied customer returning a product to Wal-Mart. Our language about God has been taken captive by our consumer culture.
Of course there is something problematic with very idea of “trying out the God thing.” Some things can’t be experienced tentatively—we can’t download salvation for just a trial period. We can’t try out the boat with one foot on the dock. Skydivers can’t jump just a little out of the plane. I am not advocating a leap in the dark. Before committing to God, people should examine all the claims of the faith, their own hearts, and the testimonies of others. But when convinced of the truth, the believer must fully commit to following Christ to even know what such a life is like.
The second problem with the language is the word “work”. When someone complains that following God hasn’t worked, it usually means they had an agenda for God. They had expectations God failed to meet. In high school I had a friend who became a Christian for a couple weeks, but concluded that following God didn’t work because his father was still drinking heavily. He had prayed for his father for two weeks, but had not shared his faith with him. First, he wanted to see if God “worked”. It did not occur to him that God may have wanted to work through him and the example of his transformed life.
Anytime we approach God on the basis of our “to-do list”, our relationship with God is doomed to fail. God insists on being God—and he alone sets the agenda. We must come on the basis of God’s “has-done list”. He has made us. He has forgiven and redeemed us. He has given us the gift of eternal life. Which of these hasn’t worked? Yes, we may not get the job we want, the friends we want—we may not even get the girl. We may not become more athletic, artistic, intelligent, or good-looking. And God may not prevent us from reaping all the consequences of what we have sown in the past.
If anyone had a right to complain that following Jesus “didn’t work,” it would have been Paul. After all, he was jailed multiple times, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, and slandered by false brothers in Christ. Eventually, he was beheaded. How can this be called “working”? Yet Paul said, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ.” The guy with the most to complain about complained the least.
Much of this consumer approach to God is the fault of the church. We often present God as a self-help guru who will provide people with a complete makeover. We focus too much on what God will do for them and too little on what he has done. When we slice up the Bible into a list of God’s promises, we often leave off the promises that we will have tribulation in this world, be hated by the world, and suffer for his name’s sake. Although we celebrate the cross as the place where our sins were taken away, we don’t always invite new Christians to pick up the cross and suffer with Christ. All this makes lousy advertising copy for the product we call God. But we are not invited to a Black Friday sale but rather Good Friday obedience.
