Day 3078 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 5:9 NIV

When a people agree to see only humiliation in humility they become unable to understand that salvation is hidden on the other side of suffering.

There's a side of the Gospel that's usually lost in our attempts to make it palatable to the world in which we live, even to the ways in which we ourselves think. It's become a somewhat half-story wherein we do as we always try and focus almost exclusively on the good, the happy, the benevolent and the beneficial. And in undertaking such an effort to stride only in the most appeasing and pleasing direction, we cast behind us the brutality which we care not to consider.

Yet it's only within the sheer violence of what Christ endured that we can even begin to contemplate both the fullness of what He accomplished and the fullness of the love that would choose such a way to achieve it.

What I find ironic is that our culture is one not at all disinterested in violence. Just look at the stuff we're consuming on a daily basis that we consider "entertainment"!

The film industry is clearly a perfect example of this. In a study way back in 2013, ten years ago, they found that 90% of the top-grossing movies over the prior 25-year period had at least one violent main character. The same study found that the amount of violence in films altogether had more than doubled since the 50's and that current PG-13 rated films are in fact more violent those which were rated R in the 1980's.

Not a movie fan, well then how about music? A pair of researchers from the University of Missouri did a study of 409 top-selling songs between the years 2006 and 2016, all of which had sold over a million copies. What they found was that 99.5% of the pop songs they analyzed, 198 in total, had lyrics that contained some sort of violent or questionable content or suggestion. And that’s just the pop songs. Not rap. Not rock. Not death metal. Just the pop songs.

And those studies were done years ago at this point. How much worse have things gotten since then?

My point is that all of this leads me to a question: If we're clearly okay consuming endless hours of mainstream media content which is only growing worse in terms of violence and the like, then what's the reason behind all of these efforts being given to water down the Gospel into a message of nothing but sunshine and comfort and acceptance and affirmation and other similar lightheartedness and pleasantry?

We hear all of these messages talking about the salvation part but comparatively few regarding what it cost to purchase our souls back from the devil to whom we'd sold them. Yep, coming out hot! Our world sold itself into bondage to the enemy of our Maker long before you or I ever took a first breath or first step. And yet, it's something so entirely common still today, arguably even more so, that we do it daily without hesitation.

This society, this culture, this common mindset and outlook has all of humanity lining up and signing on the dotted line a contract in which we exchange our hope, our peace, our wellbeing, our very chance at eternal life for a chance to be entertained. My, what high value we place upon our souls and their impending dance with forever! But that’s not how we see it, is it? We don’t think about it like that as it’s not really an internal choice. It’s a screen showing a series of flashing picture set to sound. Or it’s waves of sound rippling from the speakers in our car. It’s outside us, right?

It’s not anything we’re doing. It’s what others have already done, and well, since it’s being accepted then it must be acceptable. Right? It’s them, we’re just watching and listening and learning and following and agreeing and joining. Man slopes get slippery when you won’t let yourself admit it’s all only going downhill.

And yet, within this arrogant attempt to keep ourselves pridefully placed upon the peaks from which society is falling, we forget that our rock bottom cost Christ His life. Weird how we ignore the part that’s hard for us accept.

Could it be that we've decided we have no personal stake in the garbage we watch, but that we know we've personally played a role in the suffering that Christ endured because of the things we've done? Avoiding the guilt maybe? Glossing over the times in which we ourselves played the bad guy? Not quite so much fun when an innocent person suffers for those who traded away their innocence in order to ignore their responsibilities?

Truth is that we should be entirely and thoroughly and overwhelmingly ashamed of ourselves and how we treat with nigh contempt the fullness of the Gospel. We've no problem talking about streets of gold we look forward to walking on someday. Completely fine memorizing the passages which point to the promise in which we're growing impatient. More than happy singing songs about the joy we've found in the Name of Jesus.

But what about what we did to Jesus? What about the fact that we killed an innocent Man so we'd not feel ashamed of killing ourselves though the sins we still struggle to let go? What about the hammer, the nails, the crown of thorns our words and ways twisted into His forehead? What about the hours of agony endured only because He loved us, and somehow still does, more than we've ever cared to love ourselves, or anyone else for that matter?

We complain so much about the hard days we have in a life filled with more excess and frivolity than we know what to do with. We carry this constant outlook built upon feeling sorry for ourselves rather than being sorry for what we've done. We can always find a reason to ignore the fullness of who He is and what He's done, but we do it in the moments where we once again make all of this all about us. And because that's all but natural, we don't think anything of it.

It's as if we want the promises without the pain, the reward without the requirements, the peace without any persecution, the story without the meaning, the fame of the Name without the blame. Because we can't bear to accept what He had to go through for us to have hope in anything anywhere close to something other than the death we've always lived showing we preferred.

And yet, until we face down the death we've lived, we can't know the life He gives. Until we accept the weight of the hammer we've been holding, we can't understand the weight He felt hanging where we should have been. And until we rush into the tomb trying to share in what He did for us, we have no part in who He is.

We are called to partake of Christ. Not just talk about Him. Not just wear shirts printed with a drawing that tried in vain to capture His glory. Not just plaster little crosses all over our cars and houses. Not to just make sure that we're seen every Sunday in the same seat we've been in every week before for the past few years.

"No one comes to the Father except through me."

When we stop at the half of the Gospel that leaves us feeling rewarded without being rebuked, we create a pit stop that was never meant to be found along this narrow road leading to life. If the only part we can stomach is the part that speaks to our salvation, then I'm afraid we're still the only ones on the throne in our hearts. Because until we partake of the fullness of Christ and all He's done and all He is and all He asks and all He deserves, we deserve none of Him.

What does He call us to do? To completely lay down every idea, every fear, every doubt, every opinion, every hesitation, everything. Why? So that He can do the fullness of the good work that He began in the place where we're supposed to end. That cross wasn't just the place where Jesus died. It's supposed to be the point where we did too. But that's a reality we'll never understand until we embrace the brutality of what He came to do for us.

Yes, there are parts of this story that are altogether hard for us to understand, for us to even read. But that's because it shouldn't be easy. Easy's what got us here. But friends, here ain't where He died for us to stay. That's why we need to face the full story in every gory detail. We need to be confronted, discomforted, entirely shaken awake from our peaceful slumber inside this selfish expectation that He's already done it all to the point that we don't even need to hear about the parts that are offensive to our gentle ears.

Again, if we don't mind violence, then why shy away from the pain of this story? If we can watch other people be humiliated, why can't we ourselves embrace humility? Is it not simply because the only mindset we've known in life so far is the one bent toward only that which makes us feel so good that our comfort is assured?

Indeed, even the Disciples grappled with this uncomfortable confronting of their preconceived understandings. “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.” That's weird dude! Can't let you do that my guy! You wash my feet? No, should be the other way around, and even that's a little awkward. A bit too much humility, a little too close, let's back it down a little. Not sure about all this!

But to Peter's hesitation Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

Do we have part with Him? Or do we only know part of Him?

You see, that's the danger in a half-story told only to keep us content right where we are without any affront to the version of faith for which we've already settled.

And there's the problem: We keep settling. We keep stopping. We continue looking for these places where we can pull off when the road gets a bit too bumpy or narrow or jarring. We race right up to the foot of the cross only to turn our heads away from the crime-scene shown once there.

Let's blow that bubble, what do you say?

"Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." Beat that hollyweird!

Friends, all of this should be uncomfortable. We've been talking about some of the words found in this new outlook, this new understanding, this new life and how many of them are indeed offensive to our modern considerations, which are entirely misconstrued and messed up. Discipline, obedience, enslavement, and I think we can obviously add eating flesh and drinking blood to that list. It's all quite graphic. Quite violent. Fully offensive to our refined existence.

And yet it's all fully needed, unlike the entertainment that we otherwise have no problem welcoming into our lives.

He did all He did so that we could learn both the cost of our past mistakes and the demands of where this path will lead. He died our death so that we'd not have to fear the death that's still to come. Get that? He overcame death so that our instinctual fear of our demise no longer has the power over us it always had. That cross was and is still ours, but it means little if we refuse to take up our crosses and die to this world upon them.

The need for obedience demanded throughout this story of God's glory is something we cannot continue to downplay, overlook or water down. Jesus didn't just hang out in temples and gardens where everything is pretty and pristine. He came to this earth to enter our tomb, almost as if to finally help us see that being obedient to the plans and purposes of our Father means more than life itself.

We find nothing hoping to be saved from having to suffer. But we find salvation in our willingness to follow Christ in complete obedience both to and through the grave our bodies can't move beyond. If we've the courage and the humility to fully obey and fully follow He who came to be The Way, then we too will one day be made perfect through what He accomplished for us. But first, what's dust will return to dust. We don't just skip to the easy part, because that's not the example He showed us.

Friends, Christ is the only source of eternal salvation, and that promise is only found by those who live in utter surrender and complete obedience to Him, fully relying on the fullness of who He is and what He's done. We can't shy away from the parts that are hard to look at or think about. It might be uncomfortable to walk through all that this path asks us to deal with, think about and learn to embrace.

But the truth is that we'll never learn to obey Christ if we never have any reason to do so. And like it or not, our discomfort is an amazing way for us to learn to look outside of ourselves for what we know we can't handle by ourselves.

That’s the beauty of the Gospel; that we don’t have to walk this by ourselves. But we can never recognize that beauty of we don’t let ourselves look upon the whole picture. So no, we don't have to do this alone, but we do have to do it. Even if it's everything we would never choose to do. And that’s the truth of it, isn’t it? This isn’t the path we’d pick, and our pasts prove that.

And that’s what has to change. That’s why we have to change. What we’ve done isn’t enough in response to what He did. So it’s time for us start making choices radically different than those we’ve made in the past. Follow or stray, live or die, obey or don’t. He made it simple.

Problem is that we keep trying to make it easy.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold