When the Koinonia Community, an interracial communal farm in Georgia, found themselves the target of legal persecution in the 1950’s, the founder Clarence Jordan asked his brother Robert to represent them, to which he replied (taken from Stanley Hauerwas’ commentary on Matthew):
“Clarence, I can’t do that. You know my political aspirations. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”
“We might lose everything too, Bob” [his brother Clarence replied.]
“It’s different for you.”
“Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say?”
“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”
“Could that point by any chance be – the cross?”
“That’s right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.”
“Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer not a disciple.”
“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”
“The question is, ‘Do you have a church?'”
Hey Luke,
Am I an admirer or a disciple? You picked the wrong day (year?) to ask. Actually, what I love about this little cyber community is it’s fearlessness and it’s ability to make room for people who “don’t talk too good” (and in my case “think too good”).
I’m currently in the process of re-negotiating the terms of my relationship with the Almighty. As I may have expressed in one of my blogs, my relationship with God, from my perspective and for a good long time now, has kind been a quid pro quo = “I’ll be faithful and useful to you if you’re ‘useful’ to me.” But what happens when one of the parties is no longer “useful”? In fact I know a few people who have recently come to realize that they are not happy with the “deal” they’re getting from God.
This situation I’ve described no longer surprises or scandalizes me. I have long since resigned from the position of God’s “press secretary” (oh, no what would happen if someone knew that I struggle with my relationship with God?). Here are a few voices that I have come to identify with:
“Do you see what God has dished out for me? It’s enough to turn anyone’s stomach!
Everything in me is repulsed by it– it makes me sick.”
“Our LORD, how long must I beg for your help before you listen? How long before you save us from all this violence? Why do you make me watch such terrible injustice? Why do you allow violence, lawlessness, crime, and cruelty to spread everywhere?”
“You pushed me into this, GOD, and I let you do it. You were too much for me. And now I’m a public joke. They all poke fun at me.”
“Then God said to Jonah, ‘What right do you have to get angry about this shade tree?’ Jonah said, ‘Plenty of right. It’s made me angry enough to die!'”
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”(Job 6:6-7, Hab.1:2, Jer.20:7, Jon 4:2, Mat. 27:46)
I identify with them because not just because of their pain or disappointment but because they are people who are deeply engaged in a relationship, albeit a difficult one, with God. There is nothing half-hearted about there engagement with God.
My point as it relates to the issue of “admirer or disciple” is that it strikes me as a little too simplistic (yes, I was provokes – but in a good way) Sure all of us will be tested in our devotion to Christ and that may have been a legitimate test between those two brothers and God, but the tricky thing is that I think there is always a danger of trying to determine the level of our own discipleship to Christ in a merely abstract sense. Just when I think that I’m so devoted and I confess, “Christ, I’m willing to die for you,” He turns to and says, “The truth is Chris, before the sun rises tomorrow morning, you will deny that you even know me.”
Am I a disciple or a poser? This is one of the rare times where, “Only God knows”, is not a cliche, but the only possible response . . . at least for me.
Thanks, Chris. For us, discipleship does not really cost us much in any concrete sense. So you’re right, making distinctions like “admirer or disciple” truly is abstract, simplistic, and possibly even legalistic. But I think the weeds and the wheat (including the weeds and wheat in our own souls) begin to be separated during times of persecution, when the cost of discipleship becomes much more tangible, a little less abstract. Which isn’t to say that there isn’t the danger that “holding fast to the faith” may become its own legalistic checklist rather than personal devotion/relationship to Christ, which is an important point.
In a sense we’re all admirers seeking to be disciples. But I think for a long time I’ve been content with trying to have two “lords” over my life (or three, or four). When that is the case, I’m more an admirer of Jesus than a disciple. When I’m seeking to submit all areas of my life to Jesus, even when not always successful, that’s when I’m starting down the path to discipleship.
Am I a disciple or an admirer? Only God knows. It changes moment to moment, day to day.
Hey Luke,
Thanks for wading into the mud with me. You definitely got what I was saying. Following Christ doesn’t cost much until you experience suffering/persecution. As Americans with all our privileges and comforts I know that it can sound rather insensitive to say, “I suffer”, but the truth is that suffering is really a universal reality. Things like, betrayal, rejection, loss, shame and failure, these things know no socio-economic limits.
The reason that this post provoked me, again in a good way, was that somewhere along the line I have come to realize that dangers like the one you refer to above, “‘holding fast the faith’ as a legalistic checklist'” is the cause for so much hurt, desperation and alienation (among people – and by people, of course I mean “me”). One of the hallmarks of 21st century is the way that we are daily bombarded from millions of media outlets: books, radio stations, podcasts, “messages” that are void of a relational context – without a relational context it so easily comes off as so much ideology: moralism, rationalism, etc. This tends to deepen our sense of alienation from God and each other.
I know you get this and that’s why you and I can have a conversation about this stuff even when I have some uber-reaction to some little things you said. There is always more going on than we’re aware of. I love your style and I’m grateful for our friendship.
Thanks, man,
C
I would add that another hallmark of the 21st century is abstracting the idea of “relationship” from anything like commitment, loyalty, obedience, etc. To love Christ is to follow His commandments. To be in relationship with Christ is to follow Him, even to the cross. I think anything less and you can rightly question if you are following Jesus or admiring Jesus while following your own desires (whether they be for self, family, wealth, etc.). I think that’s what Jesus meant when He said no one can serve two masters. And in Gethsemane, even though Jesus was hurting, struggling, and wished the cup be taken from Him, He still put His Father’s will before His own.
We’re really breaking this one down (very good and necessary). Yes, you cannot separate discipleship from obedience, marriage from fidelity, honey from sweet, etc. But it’s the order of things that becomes so critical to our understanding of grace and discipleship. My obedience to Christ and my fidelity to my wife is the “fruit” and not the “root” of the relationship. Isn’t that what Jesus means when he says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.” Jn.15:5 Isn’t our obedience, and for that matter our “love”, rooted and derived from in Love Himself – “without me you can do nothing”?
Why strain to make this point? I don’t know about you but for every person that I have encountered who is guilty of “cheap grace”, I have encountered ten who are still laboring under the notion (at least a ‘practical knowledge’) that their obedience, or lack there of, is the root and foundation of their relationship to God. As P.M. likes to say, “Our relationship with God (love, forgiveness, justification) is not a ‘goal’ but a sure foundation.
Again, I think we are really close here – obedience cannot be separated from devotion, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love . . .” Jn.15:10. People commonly and mistakenly read that as if Christ says, “If you obey me, then I will love you” – but again “the order” is the issue. He says what he says in verse 10 about “obedience” only after saying, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”v9 Though they are intricately related we must constantly remind ourselves and each other of the blessed truth that obedience is the “fruit” and not the “root” of a loving relationship – at least our relationship with God.
Great dialog,
C
I think that’s why it struck you wrong, I wasn’t commenting on the order… I’m not trying to reverse the order or say in the slightest that our obedience is the basis of the relationship. The quote and my comments have little to do with salvation, but with the compartmentalizing of faith – Jesus is Lord of this area, but I’m still lord of that. As for me, I wouldn’t connect it to salvation though I can’t speak for that guy. Though I read him as saying that the church is called to be broken, not that we have a “false” or unsaved church.
That makes sense. It seems like we were talking about two sides of the “bar-ditch”. On the one side you have compartmentalized “cheap grace”, and on the other side “performance driven” Christianity. Thanks for a great dialog.