“I want to invite people to actually live this way so the life Jesus offers gradually becomes their life. It becomes less and less about talking, and more and more about the experience we are actually having.” These words hit deep w/in me this morning as I was in one of the books I’ve been reading lately, “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell. My desire is not to “win people over to Christ” by “proving” to them Christianity is true by whatever means I choose—science, art, artifacts, etc.—but to invite them into living life to the fullest (i.e. “the life Jesus offers”).
Two types of Christians I see here are those who seek to evangelize others purely by facts, or truths, striving mostly for an intellectual assent from the other person and another that is so opposed by the first type that they strive to relationally evangelize totally on the terms of experience. Regarding the first type, the individual may give in to this new knowledge and supposedly be “saved.” Yet, the person still remains unaffected by this bc it is only knowledge. He or she has not experienced the embrace of God that has the power to transform lives, affecting our whole being and way of living. However, the opposite is also dangerous. The purely experiential Christian thrives on those fuzzy feelings that are supposedly God during times of singing and what not. The problem w/ this is that it becomes like a drug. The feeling you had before must be matched at the least and after a while the person feels like they need more. If the feeling doesn’t come, then there must be something wrong w/ them and their relationship w/ the Almighty Fuzzy One. They must need to pray harder, sing louder, or go to church more often. Need more chills, more goose bumps. Never enough. The Christian “experience” becomes more like an acid trip than a constant renewal of mind, soul, and body. Both the facts Christian and the druggie Christian are missing the point. It is not an “either/or” but a “both/and.” There must be a balance!
I’d like to liken it to a person who has been to the Grand Canyon and is telling someone about all its beauty, vastness, and grandeur and another person who talks about the Grand Canyon after they just did a huge school project, saw pictures, and wrote a long paper all about it, but has never actually been. Sure, the first person has studied about it and knows all the grand facts about it, but it’s not until you have a first-hand encounter that you realize in full that all of what you read and heard is true—but there is so much more. They knew all the facts were true because they had experienced it, but there was also so much more—something that words fall short of describing. There is a passion and a sense of awe and wonder that the person who merely studied it doesn’t have and leaves the other person who is listening to them less likely to want to go and experience it for his or her self.
I’m gonna end this post right now, but there’s another one coming about something else I’ve been marinating on for a while now. It has to deal w/ something that one of the guys in the youth group said a while back that was more profound than he even realized. And, while I’m on the subject of the youth group, I want to give a huge shout-out to the Riverland Hills girl’s basketball team who just improved their record to 4-0 on the season!! After 3 years of total defeation (my made-up word) they have turned things around this year and I couldn’t be any more proud of them and happy for them. GO WOMBATS!!
Amen.
