you're not the hero of this story

I was thinking about the Apostles today, and how most of them suffered gruesome martyrdoms for the Gospel of Christ. It never used to seem odd to me, I suppose because I heard about them so often, that Jesus’ dearest friends gave their lives in brutal ways to further His message—but even just in the last two decades of my life I can see such a shift in the way Christian culture views Jesus and the Gospel that re-realizing what the Apostles sacrificed for Him almost stopped me in my tracks.

The centrality of Jesus Christ to the Christian faith is slipping—to the point that it even stunned me, a longtime Bible student, for a moment to run down the list of Apostles and how their lives ended. It’s just not in vogue to think of being a Christian as demanding something from us these days, let alone demanding everything.

Peter—crucified upside down.

Andrew—probably crucified.

James—executed by sword.

John—maybe the only one to die of old age, but Christ’s enemies still attempted to boil him to death in oil.

Thomas—stabbed to death with spears.

Paul—beheaded.

Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Jude, Simon the Zealot—almost certainly all martyred in some horrific way.

Christian culture today seems to ignore these endings, and why wouldn’t it? They don’t fit the new faith that is post-Christian Christianity. This “Christianity” is self-centric and puts us all into the hero’s role of the story. We’re all David fighting Goliath, or we’re Peter or Paul or even Jesus—until they meet their rather disappointing ends. Then we move swiftly into whatever heroic position pops up next.

But that’s not how any of the men and women who spread the Gospel saw themselves. They couldn’t make themselves the hero of the story and be successful in their mission. Every single one of them, even Jesus Christ Himself, looked to a far greater Hero and His far bigger story.

Peter was crucified upside down because he knew he was a supporting actor in an epic that points to Jesus. Paul was beheaded because he was just a messenger to the world that the true Savior had come. Jesus willingly sacrificed His life because He was a vessel for the Father’s purposes.

Now more than ever, when we are spending less time with the body of believers and taking in more and more of the world’s chatter, we must cling to the Truth. And the truth is we are not the main character of the narrative. Jesus isn’t a prop or a sidekick in our story while we pursue what matters to us. We are bondslaves to Him as He does the bidding of the Father—and if we’re not, we need to stop pretending to be on His side.

I come back to this passage from Joshua again and again:

Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, he raised his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” He said, “No; rather I have come now as captain of the army of the Lord.” And Joshua fell on his face to the ground, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?” And the captain of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so.

Joshua 5:13-15

Joshua was by all accounts the hero of Israel as they conquered the Promised Land—and yet in fact he was only a servant of the Lord, called to humble himself before the real main character of the story.

God is God. He doesn’t have to pick sides. We do.

God is not like you

I have a stack of unfinished blog post drafts in my queue. Writing comes harder these days, probably because I don’t have the two- or three-hour uninterrupted stretches of time it usually takes to get my thoughts down coherently on any topic, and also because I’ve been battling a weird sense of the pointlessness of it. It used to feel more like a calling to write out what God had put on my heart. Now I so often feel too small and insignificant to have a voice, when there are hundreds and thousands of other voices speaking at the same time, about the same things. Why not leave it to them?

But I know from many hours spent in the pages of God’s Word that His calling doesn’t have to make sense. It only has to be obeyed.

So even though there’s probably only ten minutes left of this naptime, and even though this might not be written as carefully as usual because of it, and even though someone else is probably out there preaching exactly the same thing at this moment, here’s what has been weighing heavily on me in the last several months:

God is not like you.

I’m hearing Christians justify their voting choices based on “who Jesus would vote for.” I’m noticing that Christians substitute the causes of social justice for the truth of Biblical justice. I’m watching Christians wait on the government to love their neighbor for them, because we’ve forgotten how to do it ourselves.

And the basis of it all seems to be this strange assumption that God has the same priorities that we do, that Jesus would be part of the same political party that we are. Is it becoming more and more shocking each day to consider that God might not actually agree with us on all the opinions we so strongly hold? How dare He?! As my Bible teacher used to say, “God made man in His image, but for generation upon generation, we’ve been trying to make God in ours.”

Did Jesus come as a political activist or as Savior of the world? Does God uphold peace at any cost or truth at any cost? Is love the avoidance of discomfort or the willingness to absorb whatever discomfort it takes to rescue someone else? Should the radical grace of Jesus for the lost inspire pride in one’s lostness or grief over one’s sin?

The answers to these questions seem obvious at a glance, but the words and actions of so many Christians prove just how confused we are about what ought to be basic.

Jesus is nobody’s mascot. He isn’t in your party and He didn’t vote for the person you voted for. He doesn’t celebrate your pride or fear your discomfort. He isn’t too holy to stoop down and save you right where you are in your moment of desperation and He’s not waiting for the government to do His job.

He is not like you. He is not like me. He is not waiting for our counsel or our approval or our opinion. He’s already King, already Creator, already Rescuer.

It’s nothing but grace that He has invited us in.

1 The Mighty One, God, the Lord, has spoken,
And summoned the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
2 Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty,
God has shone forth.
3 May our God come and not keep silence;
Fire devours before Him,
And it is very tempestuous around Him.
4 He summons the heavens above,
And the earth, to judge His people:
5 “Gather My godly ones to Me,
Those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice.”
6 And the heavens declare His righteousness,
For God Himself is judge. Selah.

7 “Hear, O My people, and I will speak;
O Israel, I will testify against you;
I am God, your God.
8 “I do not reprove you for your sacrifices,
And your burnt offerings are continually before Me.
9 “I shall take no young bull out of your house
Nor male goats out of your folds.
10 “For every beast of the forest is Mine,
The cattle on a thousand hills.
11 “I know every bird of the mountains,
And everything that moves in the field is Mine.
12 “If I were hungry I would not tell you,
For the world is Mine, and all it contains.
13 “Shall I eat the flesh of bulls
Or drink the blood of male goats?
14 “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving
And pay your vows to the Most High;
15 Call upon Me in the day of trouble;
I shall rescue you, and you will honor Me.”

16 But to the wicked God says,
“What right have you to tell of My statutes
And to take My covenant in your mouth?
17 “For you hate discipline,
And you cast My words behind you.
18 “When you see a thief, you are pleased with him,
And you associate with adulterers.
19 “You let your mouth loose in evil
And your tongue frames deceit.
20 “You sit and speak against your brother;
You slander your own mother’s son.
21 “These things you have done and I kept silence;
You thought that I was just like you;
I will reprove you and state the case in order before your eyes.

22 “Now consider this, you who forget God,
Or I will tear you in pieces, and there will be none to deliver.
23 “He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me;
And to him who orders his way aright
I shall show the salvation of God.”

Psalm 50

the Lord is (not) slow

I wrote a post earlier this year about different things God has used to help me understand Himself and His Word. One of them was in anticipation of becoming a mother. I didn’t know what, exactly, God would show me about Himself through this sudden new identity and role, but I knew it would (and will) be plentiful over the coming years and decades.

He has already begun.

There are probably thousands of tiny lessons I could write about, and some big ones taught over and over again, but for the sake of time (it’s the last naptime of the day) I just wanted to record one:

The Lord is (not) slow.

The verse in 2 Peter reads without the parentheses, yes. “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). And I’m sure Peter doesn’t need my grammatical input to make exactly the point he wanted to make!

But I added the parentheses here because having a baby has shown me that in so many ways a mortal human wouldn’t be, God IS slow. He is not rushed. He doesn’t hurry to get things done in the most efficient way possible.

He is slow. He enjoys the process of doing, creating, being, rescuing.

He didn’t come to rescue His people as a white knight on a white steed to destroy all their enemies with a word (although that will come later—see Revelation 19). He came as a baby.

And while babies certainly grow at an alarming rate, constantly developing in skill and motion and speech and independence, and learning at a pace that they will never replicate later in life—they also take a comparatively long time to be good for much, at least in the way of rescuing.

I try to imagine Jesus newly born, squashed and curled up and red-faced like Clara was. I try to imagine being Mary—did she think, “This is how God is going to rescue His people?!”? I look at Clara, who is just now attempting to roll from her back to her tummy and hasn’t done it without help even once, and I definitely don’t think that’s how I would rescue my people. Why grow a person up for 30+ years before even putting Him into ministry, let alone letting Him do any rescuing? Why not just sweep down and get it done?!

But the Lord is (not) slow.

He may look slow to me, when He chooses relationship over instant results or when He allows for a process rather than waving a magic wand. But in His process there is so much patience—grace—longsuffering—love. There’s a plan. And that’s the only reason I’m here right now, writing this, looking ahead to the celebration of Christmas and the Child that was born to be God With Us… because He is, and at the same time beautifully isn’t, slow.