students of jesus

They’ll let anyone teach at some universities, and I’m proof of that. It’s the beginning of the semester in our irenic little town. Fall freshmen have descended on the small Christian college like autumn leaves: beautiful, but doomed. Poor kids--31 unsuspecting students are now subject to the central passions of my life with Jesus.

They don’t suspect it will take me 16 weeks to share the two convictions that inform my life: the king and his kingdom are breaking into the here and now.

In the very first week I survey the class, “How many of you think Jesus is a worthy role model?” Every hand goes up. “And how many of you think you could live up to his example?” No one stirs. No hand is raised. This introduces passion number one: why would anyone choose an impossible mentor? I’ve written about it before.

Just when they recover from central passion number one, I subject them to central passion number two: what if the good news isn’t about us going to heaven, but instead it’s about heaven coming to us?

With each new class I invite my students to engage in a spiritual exercise. Would you like to play along? Here is the question we must answer:

What if you woke up tomorrow morning to find that heaven had come earth? What would your world be like?

I ask each student to imagine heaven on earth. Here are a dozen answers from my new best friends:

• “If Heaven came to Earth sickness would turn into strength.”
• “God would be everywhere. God would give advice, spend the day with you, make sure everyone was fed, and most importantly share his wisdom with us all.”
• “Heaven’s nature would begin to alter the workings of the earth and wipe out the impure creations of man.”
• “No one would be lonely or without a companion.”
• “Life with my daughter would change for the better. I would not feel that sense of silent discrimination from those who live in glass houses . . .  we would not be the topic of whispers about a situation people truly know nothing of. We would not suffer judgments from those people with ample imperfections of their own.”
• “This little town, what some would call a boring place, would flourish with excitement and love and unified happiness that we were living amongst the living God.”
• “No one would have to suffer because in God’s home you can find everything you need.”
• “Famine would be completely erased. Sadness would be no more. Not one tear would be shed”
• “If heaven came to earth it would be a continuing cycle of great accomplishment.”
• “The people on earth would be 100% stress free. No one would ever need to worry about anything at all . . . They would laugh and carry on as if they had no sense of time or worry . . . the normal stress I feel in my chest and head would be gone.”
• “How could you be sad with so much love and compassion around you?”
• “Heaven is where you can go to be yourself and to be with Jesus.”

Can you feel the hope rising within you? In the coming weeks these students will be forced to listen to me turn their gospel upside down. I’m convinced the good news isn’t solely about going to heaven when you die, it’s about what God has done to bring heaven here to earth.

In this class we will spend the entire semester on Matthew 5, 6, & 7. That’s the “Sermon on the Mount.” It’s astonishing how many people think no one could ever put Jesus’ words into practice. It’s more astonishing still how many people think that because his words are poetic or beautiful that he somehow didn’t expect us to give them a try. Last semester one well-meaning student told me “Jesus preached this sermon in order to prove to us that we couldn’t possibly do any of that stuff.” Really? Would the greatest teacher who ever lived simply come to point out what losers we really are? Would God send his Son on a mission designed to fill us with shame and inadequacy?

That’s the most challenging part of this spiritual exercise. These young students intuitively long for the beauty, the grace, and hope of heaven. Why do they believe they must wait a lifetime to experience His good gifts? How about you?

With each passing day the image becomes more vivid: Jesus dancing with delight, rejoicing at the success of his disciples and the cluelessness of the “wise and the learned.” What kind of God celebrates when smart people are clueless?

It’s perhaps foolish to present three posts on the same subject within eight days, but so far I’ve been unable to deliver the baby. Last Monday: “An omniscient God is not impressed with the size of our intellect” Thursday: “What if our approach to following Jesus is fueled by the world’s idea of wisdom?” And today I wonder still whether we have chosen a worldly method to pursue the King of Heaven.

The spirit of this age respects knowledge. It’s a given. Knowledge trumps ignorance. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is self-authenticating. When we bring the spirit of this age to our study of Scripture we emphasize the texts which serve the value of knowledge. “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge . . .” How many books have opened with Hosea 4:6 as a call to study?

We have loved knowledge since the Garden of Eden. Perhaps we have loved knowledge more than we have loved our Creator. In our day the western church presents a view of discipleship based upon ever-increasing knowledge, and Christianity becomes a subject to be mastered. As a result those who are smartest become the best disciples. The spirit of this present age tells us knowledge is good because it is knowledge. But what if the smartest among us know nothing of love?

Yet woven into the fabric of the Biblical witness is the still small voice of relationship. It warns of the dangers of knowledge. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” comes the whisper. Later on the voice grows: "Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” We discover the voice coming from Paul’s prayer closet interceding on our behalf, “I pray that you . . . may have power . . . to know this love that surpasses knowledge.” Perhaps we can learn from Paul--one of the greatest minds in history--that knowledge can never drive us to love.

Will you join me? I’ll continue meditating as the week goes on: what if true knowledge grows from love, and what if apart from love knowledge cannot be true?

You can imagine how excited I was when Dallas Willard stopped by this morning:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

Well, yes, and we all know what happened to his Egg-ness, don’t we?

One of the great pitfalls of reading the scripture resides right inside my own head: there’s a distance between what the Spirit speaks and what I hear. I trust the Bible. It’s the revelation of God’s heart and mind. But I don’t trust me. I’m capable of missing the point, of reading my own values into the text. I’m capable of using God’s wonderful words for my own devices instead of his purposes. That makes the Bible a dangerous place to visit, but I’m not giving up.

Monday’s post marveled at what kind of God would celebrate when smart people are clueless, and I’m still awestruck by this idea: God isn’t impressed with my wisdom or intelligence, but he is impressed with the condition of my heart. If I ever compete with the Almighty on Jeopardy, I’m toast. Yet he will bend low to comfort a contrite spirit. While meditating on these things, I came across the opening of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In the first two chapters he talks about the wisdom of men and the wisdom of God. Here’s a sample:

• I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.
• Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
• The world through its wisdom did not know him . . . 
• God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise;
• When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom

So much for the way the world thinks. Then Paul begins to reveal God’s wisdom:

• We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom hidden . . .
• "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"

What if our approach to following Jesus is fueled by the world’s idea of wisdom? I’ve met too many “smart” Christians. Perhaps you have too: the guys who can quote the Bible from start to finish and are happy to tell you what it means; the guys who bring the “been there, done that” attitude to the revelation of God’s word. I once knew a pastor who told a young man, “I’ve done the hard work of studying the scripture. I know what it means, so I don’t have to keep going back to learn it again and again.”

I’d like to suggest four checkpoints suggested by these first two chapters of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:

If anyone could have brought worldly wisdom to bear on the scriptures, it would have been Paul. Even in his day Paul was recognized as a man of vast learning and intelligence, but until Jesus confronted him he was clueless. Instead, he spent three days in Damascus, blinded by the light of Christ, rethinking his life of study. Perhaps he spent three years (see Acts 9:9 and Galatians 1: 16-18).

What if Mars Hill is a cautionary tale: Most 21st century scholars hold this speech up as a great example of evangelism. Paul came to Corinth directly from Athens, where he gave his “great speech” on Mars Hill--but was it really great? Acts 17:34 tells us only a “few men” believed. You can read his own reflections regarding his time in Athens in 1 Corinthians 2: 1-5.  It’s surprising! Perhaps when he visited the seat of philosophy he fell into the wisdom trap and tried to play the world’s game. He certainly changed his method when he got to Corinth.

True wisdom rests in Jesus Christ, and he is within our reach. Paul reveals that Jesus is the wisdom of God, and he defines the wisdom of God as “righteousness, holiness, and redemption.” (1: 30) What if wisdom is knowing what to love and whom to fear? What if we have accepted the world’s idea of wisdom and applied it to following Jesus? What if worldly philosophy is merely the Bill and Ted version of God’s true wisdom?

It’s possible to be a Christian, even a smart one, and still be radically unspiritual. How many of us marry the wisdom of this age to our expression of the faith? Many churches operate on the principles of business and marketing. Others operate in the realm of power politics--both right and left. Still others (far too many) apply the scriptures like a lawyer applies mercy. Shouldn't we take three days--or three years--to ask whether our ideas of Christianity come from Jesus or someone else?

Humpty Dumpty applied his dizzying intellect to the meaning of the word “glory.” We saw how it worked out for him. Is it possible we do the same?

At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.” (Luke 10:21)

Dancing Jesus icon by Mark Dukes

What kind of God celebrates when smart people are clueless and newcomers are in on the joke? Luke tells the story of seventy men returning to Jesus with news of spectacular ministry results. Jesus dances for joy and says something so challenging we could meditate on it all week. He rejoiced that the wise and the learned did not have access to the ways of God. He was delighted that children had discovered the way of the Kingdom.

Jesus revealed the things of God by inviting others to join his mission and carry out his work. Though there has never been a greater teacher in the history of the world, Jesus placed a higher priority on innocence than intelligence. He taught in parables; he infuriated the religious wise guys; and he welcomed those foolish enough to simply do what he said.

This bears reflection in the coming days: An omniscient God is not impressed with the size of our intellect, but he is impressed with the size of our heart. How can a finite human mind grasp an infinite God? St. Augustine--although he was one of the greatest intellectuals in history--lamented it was his heart that was too small. He asked God to graciously enlarge the “mansions of his heart,” not the halls of his mind. True, we should love the Lord with all our minds, but the order is important: love comes before knowledge.

The Holy Spirit is not impressed with how many verses we have committed to memory. He does seem to delight in us when even a few of those verses find their way into our everyday lives.