Off the Road Religion

Joe Stowell in his book, Following Christ, says, “Starting out as a follower with a commitment to come after Him as the all-compelling centre of life is the easy step. Staying on the road with Him is the challenge.”

After many years of church work, both as a layman and an occupational worker, I would say that most people, who set out to follow Christ, find staying on the road with Him a challenge beyond what they are willing to bear. Instead most professing followers develop a personalized hand-selected theology that in the whole bears little resemblance to the full devotion God expects. As a result, to quote Stowell again, “We have masqueraded Christ in our own ways, so that when non-Christians see us, they see more of our distorted portrayal of Christianity than they do a clear reflection of the character and quality of Christ.”

It seems to me that we, the church, are guilty of the gravest form of idolatry; rather than live as those created in God’s image, we have reduced Him to a god formed in our own image; we have presumed upon His goodness, mercy and grace while abandoning any attempt to emulate His holiness. As a result the church of Christ has lessened effectiveness in realizing our mandate of global life transformation through the preaching and living of God’s good news. While we lay claim to believing what God’s word says, in truth we are not following on the road with Christ and there is little that distinguishes most professing followers of Jesus from people who remain eternally lost and distanced from God. The proof of that can be discovered in the mountain of statistics related to marital discord, family unrest and white-collar crime to name a few, but perhaps the gravest of all tragedies is the overt disobedience, deception, dissention and complacency within the community of Christ itself. We have built our church on misguided comfortable consumer doctrines while refusing to let Jesus build His church on the unchanging tenets of Biblical truth.

Even a casual reading of John 6 will help us refocus on what it means to be a Christian and follow Jesus, “Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” (John 6:57) To feed on Jesus is to fully identify with every element of His life and teaching. At this point many who started the easy step of following Jesus, turned away because they realized that being a Christian was not a casual religious cakewalk but a life committed to full devotion to God, His will and His ways. As such when people see us there ought to be more than just a distorted image that is little more than reflection of themselves, there must be a clear image of Christ, the one who promises life in its fullness. We must be able to say as Paul said, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11:1)

I feel it is time for us in the church to do as Jesus did and make clear the image we are to reflect and make a clear distinction between a faith that is on the road with Him and a consumer religion that is clearly off the road.