When novelty runs out what have you got left?

What does mature Christian discipleship look like? That’s right it’s supposed to resemble Jesus and His teaching….yet are we possibly the most distracted and restless of people in this age. Read below:

Read this incredibly insightful quote by the late Eugene Petersen in his book “A Long obedience in the same direction”,

“It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifyingly difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture anything, even news about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its NOVELTY (emphasis mine), it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations called holiness.”

What an amazing insight this is. It strikes at the heart of issues that churches are facing, especially in the ‘West.’ Dallas Willard puts it this way,

“The leading assumption in the American church is that you can be a Christian but not a disciple” (taken from the article ‘Rethinking Evangelism’)

Charles Spurgeon once wisely said,

“If you have to give a carnival to get people to come to church, then you will have to keep giving carnivals to keep them coming back”

Tech and social media phenomenon such as Tik Tok are built off the insatiable quest that has been skilfully cultivated over the past number of years for fast-paced novelty driven content creation. Big Tech companies have made it big through monetising dopamine addictions. It’s well known too that young men (or women) who spend years watching pornography often sabotage later committed relationships if this restless pursuit for fascination and an experience is not restored and recalibrated.

Being an ‘apprentice’ of Jesus today doesn’t need to be dull. Abrahamic faith will stretch us and take us beyond many visible horizons. Yet much of where we live our life is immersed in the ‘ordinary’ and by design (God!) . I do not think it is overstating it to say that there has grown a form of ‘Christianity’ that is addicted to a need to be entertained, a need for constant novelty. Over the years I have heard many Christians state that they believe that the main motivation of God is to make them ‘happy’. In essence, that God exists primarily to serve up our best life now. Sad and delusional.

The big question is what are our lives built upon? If it’s Jesus and His finished work and an effectual calling then there will be the right foundation to traverse valleys of ordinariness, seasons of delay and dark nights of the soul. This will also be the right foundation for progress and success, yoked to Jesus not addicted to our own significance.

If our discipleship is not built on Jesus then eventually the cracks will show. We will seek to assuage emptiness by filling it with other things and usually with a very spiritual sounding side-step. Speaking on the ‘Dark Night of the soul’ Gerald May points to the fact that God allows some of our deepest trials and mystery to help free us from unhelpful attachments and to see that “there is something wonderful at the heart of our existence“. It’s not just about linear progression or ‘being happy’ and entertained all the time. There is a wonder that awaits. God forbid, it’s also not reducing the Holy Spirit’s work to a feeling or ‘buzz’ as His Presence can operate as both ‘felt’ or otherwise as He determines. He has promised to never leave us or forsake us. Apprentices of Jesus will need to learn to pick up their cross and follow Jesus, to rest in Him. They will need to appreciate that the gospel is for them as believers too! We are invited into the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus and share in this inheritance by the Spirit through our union with the risen Christ.

I will finish with this. I was having a very bad day recently. My focus was entirely on a set of problems that I perceived and I was drawn into a pit of despair. I said to Ali (my wife and best friend), ‘What’s the point?’ – something that I rarely ever say or descend to in relation to God’s Kingdom plan for our lives. Ali thought about what to say for a moment and proceeded to utter the very wisest of mic-drop words,

“The point is Jesus”

When I make myself or a perceived hindrance the focus of my gaze then I descend into the place that “self” ultimately leads. Away from God. When I make Jesus the point then he is the reason for it all. This is our address, hard as it can be to live there.

This is the place where apprentices learn to move beyond novelty and self and into the deeper wonder of following Him for Him.

Selah.

Jason Shiels, August 10th, 2022