Someone once said that the purpose of the news media is the manufacture and maintenance of anxiety. I Think he was right, but I also think that some churches do something similar.
That famous quotation, “If Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for him” (C.T. Studd), is true. But sensitive souls are vulnerable to a dangerous distortion, “If Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice I make can ever be enough for him”. I wonder if this explains an unhealthy drivenness in the churches?
Activity is good, the lord himself was noted for it, he ‘Went about doing good’ (Acts 10:38) and so should we. But why do I meet a lot of neurotic Christians living with a constant sense of failure, “I’m not doing enough, I’m not keen enough, I don’t have enough faith”.
Preachers and youth leaders can make this worse. Most sermons conclude with an appeal for more activity or more intensity. More activity means that we must ‘do more’, ‘witness more’, ‘pray more’, ‘worship more’. More intensity means ‘pray harder’, ‘worship harder’, ‘have more faith!’
The Bible rejects this driven culture. All but one of Paul’s epistles begin with a simple greeting, “Grace and peace to you…”. We start with God’s grace. Grace means that you are good enough for him already – you cannot work yourself up to a new ‘level’ to enjoy this, you can only receive is as you would a generous gift.
Then there is peace. A little English word that sits on the shoulders of a giant Hebrew one, ‘shalom,’ which means ‘wellbeing’ or ‘wholeness’. Gospel peace is the eventual restoration of my broken humanity – body, mind and spirit. It also means that we can know inner calm in dire circumstances right now.
That is why the most resilient Christians are those with a very high view of the sovereignty of God – they trust him. Our drivenness derives from a poor understanding of God’s nature. ‘Grace? Surely, he couldn’t be that generous?’ ‘Peace? Surely, we need a bit of a kicking to get us going?’
Yes, he is that generous and, no, we don’t need a good kicking. Know this, if you stopped praying today, never go to church again, never share your faith or read your Bible again, God will still love you as much as he would if you fill your life with those things.
So many Christians, in their life and witness, convey a simple message, “Follow Jesus and you could be as frazzled as me”. They are working out of drivenness. My friend Chris once said to me, “If I wanted more peace in my life, I wouldn’t do church, I’d check out Buddhism!”
In his lovely book, ‘Working from a place of rest’ Tony Horsefall advocates the opposite. On old hymn captures Tony’s message like this:
Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace.
An ’ordered life’, one that expresses God’s grace and peace, is an incredible advert for the gospel. If Chris could see it lived, he wouldn’t bother with Buddhism.
I have not stopped challenging people to ‘go about doing good’. But I find myself more often encouraging people to learn to say ‘no’ and take time to appreciate grace, peace, love, hope, and joy. I believe it would transform our church life for the better if our pastors and youth leaders did the same.