Recently, I wrote a post entitled Jesus Didn’t Come to Make Your Life Better. As I’ve meditated upon this, I’m more and more convinced that it’s true: Jesus didn’t to make our lives better; rather he died to give us better lives. The distinction is far more than semantic; in fact, there lay a vast gulf between the two. In the one, the expectation is simply to improve upon the existing, e.g. make life better. In the other, well, it’s something else entirely, e.g., a new life.
Jesus didn’t come to improve the exisitng life, as if to renovate it. Rather, He came to tear it down and build something else–something better–in its place. So let us stop with the pandering nonsense of having our best lives now. Jesus came to resurrect the walking dead, but only those who know they’re dead can be raised. In simple point of fact, and in the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “when Christ calls a man he bids him come and die.” There is no improving death. A corpse may appear animate, but is no less dead. This is a paradigm shift of monumental proportions.
It means we die:
To oursleves
To everything we hold dear
To what itching ears want to hear
To self-actualization
To the life we’re trying to build
To all the ways and means of trying to make it day to day which have never quite worked.
In short, we must die to the notion that Jesus came to make this life better, embrace death, and let him raise us into the better life he’s promised.
It’s not easy–far from it. “Consider the cost,” Jesus said. Have you?
If you believe this is true, that a paradigm shift is needed, will you join me in a community project to write it down for posterity? If you’re tired of the lies, of the easy believism, of trying to animate the corpse of a dead life, will you consider sharing the story of your life with me here? Who knows, this may grow into a movement.
The world needs your voice.
