There are many things in this life that have been deemed “disposable” in one sense or another. Relationships(if you care to challenge that look up this years divorce rates), jobs, material goods, people in general. Though you may push back against this it is clear, from the facts that surround us, that we are such an inwardly focused people who most things in our lives only hold value as long as we give it value.
So the question that looms is, can faith be counted among these other items? According to a friend and member of our fledgling gospel community it certainly can, or at least that’s what she learned when she was growing up, and it has severely impacted how she views Jesus, and His gospel…and those who say they represent Him.
Last night we continued to explore the book of John, and in the latter part of chapter 6 we came to this statement, “66 After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” Presumably these were people who followed Jesus relatively closely, and yet because He said something difficult to them, you will have to go and read it, too much detail to go into here, they decided He was no longer worth following. Amazing…these were not people dependent on the written scriptures to know Jesus intimately, they had Him, incarnate God in flesh, and yet…their faith…was disposable.
This was my friend Audrey’s experience growing up, and even now with some of her friends and family who profess to follow Jesus…Jesus was and is a function of their life, when convienant…and when He is not, when there are things that they refuse to let go of to follow, or things said in the scriptures that they want to resist, she explained that they simply ceased to follow, and ceased to take her to worship with the church when she was a child.
Is Jesus really that easy to get hooked too and unhooked from? Surely not! But this is how many who call on His name treat Him and His gospel, and it, along with fools on television begging for money, are the primary reason why many of friends are skeptics, doubters, agnostics, and atheist. It is these people who turn them away from Christ. They offend before the gospel ever has a chance to.
Ghandi is famous for saying, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” This is telling. I wish I could show him 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
Here is reality, many of Jesus disciples turned away, because they were never truly his…many treat Jesus and His gospel as disposable because they don’t truly belong to Him. If you are a skeptic, and have made an impression of all Christ followers because of one of theses “many” I am sorry, truly. If you say you are a follower of Jesus, are you? Or will you turn away? Is your Jesus disposable
