A Christian But Not a Disciple?
Unfortunately, several churches here in Texas have experienced a series of pastoral scandals. Over the past few months, half a dozen or more well-known celebrity leaders have resigned or been removed from their positions for various reasons, some known and some unknown. Frustration, anger, sadness, confusion, grief, and embarrassment are rightfully expressed inside and outside these churches.
And, as is common when public scandals rock the church, well-meaning followers say something like, “Well, we just need to keep our eyes on Jesus. We shouldn’t put our trust in men and women anyway.”
Over the years, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with this type of sentiment. Not because we shouldn’t keep our eyes on Jesus, but because we should desire to become people others would want to emulate and trust. In fact, it should be our expectation.
I appreciate the loyalty behind the statement, though such a conclusion inadvertently supports a shallow faith and, usually, the rejection of exploring our stories as a necessary part of our discipleship.
The Ongoing Dilemma
If you’ve been following along, we’re exploring the first of Three Primary Problems that exacerbate The Great Omission: the Discipleship Dilemma. In our compassionate, gentle quest to become more like Jesus, we seek to know Him better and better. We desire to experience Him, come to Him in our authentic, raw state, and accept His loving gaze.
At the same time, we also seek to understand and know ourselves better. We dig into the depths of our hearts with Him and a trusted friend to slowly uncover what lies beneath, namely the ideas and desires that power and govern us. This is a theological concept known as double knowledge.
Some argue that this inner journey is only for uncovering harmful patterns and sin, but it’s much broader than that.
Shallow Christianity looks at self-destructive and community-damaging behavior and chalks it up to our sinful nature. Granted. But that’s where the conversation tends to stop.
Repentance, healing, redemption, repair, and restoration are conditions of the inner person that don’t usually occur until we’ve asked, “Why?” Yes, we’re sinners. However, what about my story, thought patterns, relationships, and experiences are pulling me in harmful directions? Until I deal with these bedrock forces authentically with Jesus, my journey toward freedom will be stunted.
The Shopaholic
Years ago, I was friends with a couple, and the wife was a shopaholic. She could not control her spending, and most of what she bought sat in unopened boxes in closets and corners of their house. The husband worked himself to the bone, trying to keep their family afloat, while she attempted to calm her inner demons with the thrill of buying new things.
They were Christians. They knew about original sin and understood its impact on humanity.
However, I don’t think they ever connected her addiction with her discipleship. They both seemed to accept her harmful behavior as a matter of course without ever digging beneath the surface to ask, “Why?” And that didn’t seem to expect her to recover and heal.
Something in her story drove her to seek solace and purpose in the short-term high of getting a good deal, but they were either unaware of or too afraid to explore what caused the ideas and desires governing her, most likely harm done to her by someone else.
I think this is an example of what Willard was getting at—that we can be Christians but not disciples. We can “get saved,” but we have little expectation that there will be any real, ongoing transformation of our hearts and inner lives after our initial rescue into the kingdom.
And It Was Good
However, our inward journey is much more than coming to grips with our corruption. There is so much to discover that’s worth celebrating. What good gifts, desires, talents, stories, experiences, personalities, quirks, foibles, idiosyncrasies, and depth you possess! You really are a miracle – a uniquely formed creature with extraordinary value. You are worth knowing and being known.
I’m continually struck by how many people I interact with (including myself) who struggle to accept that God truly wants to be our friend, that He not only loves us but also likes us. It makes His day when we come to Him, in whatever condition we find ourselves, and pour out our souls to Him. Or when we take a walk with Him. Or when we invite Him into our work, our hobbies, and our families.
As we journey into our inner lives, we explore both light and dark, virtue and vice, help and hurt. And we wrestle authentically with Jesus with what we discover.
Much of modern Christianity, however, ignores or rejects the pursuit of self-knowledge. While some claim the inner journey may lead to self-worship (and it can), a lack of self-knowledge can also lead to all sorts of harm, including church and family implosions.
When we attempt to explain away fallen leaders (and fallen people like the rest of us), it’s easy to say we should keep our eyes on Jesus. It helps us cope with the reality of ourselves.
At the same time, we must also embrace that we are here to reflect Jesus to ourselves and the world. Yes, we should fix our eyes on Jesus, though Jesus is most present and transformative through us.
The Hopeful Road
I don’t think we can become sinless on this side of death. I do, however, believe disciples should fully expect to sin less. Stated more positively, a person intentionally engaged in community to become more like Jesus should fully expect to love more, be wiser, experience contentment, forgive more quickly, give more sacrificially, and live in a conversational, two-way relationship with God. This doesn’t happen by osmosis. We decide to engage in a lifelong journey of inner transformation.
This means the shopaholic experiences Jesus in such a way that the short-term thrill of buying is transformed into long-term inner contentment as they invite Jesus into their stories. The parents who manipulate, control, and triangulate their kids loosen their grip as they allow Jesus to heal their own childhood wounds. The celebrity pastor who struggles with pride and thinks he deserves a woman on the side embraces the joy of self-sacrifice.
If we believe Jesus should be the only good example to whom we look, we will struggle with Paul. He was deeply self-aware in that he understood the struggle in his inner life, yet he wrote, “… the things you have learned and received, heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you” (emphasis mine).
I fear The Great Omission suggests we’ve lost the vision of what it means to be a deep disciple. A deep person lives according to the Way – someone who listens intently, gives sacrificially, loves selflessly, discerns wisely, calls out injustice shrewdly, and seeks the kingdom comprehensively. It’s a Way that stuns others simply by the way we interact with God, others, ourselves, and creation and culture.
We don’t follow the Way just because we’re commanded to. We live according to the Way because we are so deeply and desperately loved by the One who first lived it, and we can’t help but love Him in return.
The Journey Inward
Yet the path of the Way always runs through our hearts and stories. It is the only path to freedom.
Kevin O’Brien writes, “Spiritual freedom is an interior freedom, a freedom of the mind and heart. People who are spiritually free know who they are – with all of their gifts and limitations – and are comfortable with who they are. They are able to discern God’s presence, find meaning in their lives, and make choices that flow from who they are, whatever the circumstances.
We have numerous preoccupations that get in the way of our hearing and responding to God’s call: fears, biases, greed, the need to control, perfectionism, resentments, and excessive self-doubt. Or we fixate on the past or obsess about the future, failing to live in the present. These tendencies bind us and hold us back from loving God, ourselves, and others as we ought to. They create chaos in our souls and lead us to make poor choices.”
As evidenced by the fallen pastors in Texas, we all struggle with our shadow selves. Yet, the hope and expectation of a deep disciple is that the dark corners of our hearts are gently but inevitably illuminated as we courageously return to our stories of joy, contentment, abandonment, betrayal, peace, rest, abuse, harm, and struggle.
We meet Jesus in our stories and discover He was not only there in those moments but also now, waiting to heal, redeem, and restore us so that we can experience the inner freedom He so generously offers. Though the journey inward can be painful, it is the path to interior freedom, contentment, and peace.
