In Bible study, sometimes a well-meaning gentleman will use this logic:

If you don’t have joy and peace and compassion in your life, what does that say to others about Jesus?

I understand this sort of thinking.  I know we’re supposed to be witnesses to the world about how God flexes His power through us, and often our lack of unity looks like God doesn’t make us any different than anyone else.

But some days — I just want to flip a table and kick a trashcan and race a cop car and jump out a window and tell everyone that I hate my life right now and I don’t really feel like repping Jesus everyday, and that it probably won’t get better if you tell me that I need to be a “better witness.”

I totally get that we’re called to bear fruits and endure patiently and other Christianese things like that, but it sort of shuts down my need to be honest and vulnerable and real with other people. 

So then I just fake it, and that’s no good either, and I end up feeling like a failure whenever I read that bumper sticker, “If you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”  I mean like jeez, I guess not if you put it that way.

Continue reading “Trying To Witness Vs. How You Really Are” →

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

— Søren Kierkegaard