A man in Kiev, Ukraine wanted to be a modern day Daniel. He went to the zoo in Kiev earlier this month and lowered himself by a rope into a den of lions. The lion enclosure is on an isolated “animal island” surrounded by thick concrete blocks to protect people from the lions. The zoo was packed with visitors when the man took of his shoes and went up to the lions shouting, “God will save me, if he exists” A zoo official said, “A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.” He was killed almost instantly.
This Ukranian man evidently had read the story of Daniel and the lion’s den, but he had failed to read Christian history where Christians faced lions in the Roman coliseums and lost their lives — much to the pleasure of the emperor and citizens of Rome. I think there are many people who have a very naive and simplistic concept of God and the Christian life. It is easy to get caught up in idealism and miss the real message of Scripture, not to mention the meaning of the Christian life. The message of Scripture always has both feet planted firmly on the ground. It is people who misread and misunderstand the message that is there. And the reason is that it is easier to believe in the simplistic ideas, that people like our friend from Kiev had, than to live out what it means to know God and live the life he has set out for us. The Christian life is not about trying to prove God exists, or even believing he exists, it is about being a new person.
It is dangerous thing to test God, either by doing something foolish to see if he will rescue you, or by living your life going against everything that he has said, and think that as long as you shoot up a prayer before you gasp your last breath everything will be just fine. It’s what I call “ticket theology.” Ticket theology says, “Being a Christian is all about being ‘saved’ and getting your ticket to heaven. It doesn’t matter if you don’t live like a Christian. If you believe the right things, or you are saved that is all that matters. After all, if you are saved you are always saved, so don’t worry if your life is messed up, you’re still going to heaven.” People with ticket theology think that the only thing that is important in the Christian life is salvation — whether or not they are forgiven and are on their way to heaven. They rarely think about real discipleship and taking the Sermon on the Mount seriously as a lifestyle, they just want their ticket. They want to avoid hell and go to heaven without ever considering whether they will be happy in heaven. I might say that if you don’t like living for God here, you’re going to really hate it there.
I have some basic objections to ticket theology, and the first is: It trivializes the Christian life. This kind of thinking reduces the Christian life down to some kind of spiritual fire insurance. It turns the Christian experience into a recipe: “Say this and you will be saved,” or “Pray this prayer and you will be forgiven.” Now, I am not minimizing the importance of that, or the fact that we are saved by grace. The Bible does say, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast.” But many people stop reading there and forget the next verse: “ For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10). We cannot save ourselves by our good works, and whenever we think God owes us heaven because we have been better than most people, then we are in trouble. But there is more to the Christian life than just being “saved by grace.”
This week Angel Maturino Resendiz, known as the “Railroad Killer,” was executed. He was an extremely cruel and brutal serial killer. Just before his execution he mumbled a prayer, saying “Lord, forgive me. Lord, forgive me.” He turned to the families of his victims who were watching through a window in another room and said, “I want to ask if it is in your heart to forgive me.” I don’t know what was really going on in the heart of this man. I do know that it was too bad that he could not have been repentant before he committed the crimes. It is remarkable that he wanted mercy when he showed no mercy to his victims. I’m not saying he could not be forgiven, but what horrors could have been prevented, and how different his own life would have been if he had not waited until the last moment to try and “make things right” with God and other people. This same scenario is played out in many people’s lives on a lesser scale. They avoid God their whole life and then want a ticket to heaven at the last minute. They have no use for the Christian life, but for some reason still want to go to heaven. It is a trivialization and gross misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian. Ticket Christianity has nothing to do with actually knowing God and living for him.
The second objection I have to ticket theology is: It misses the point of the Christian life. What is the point of being a Christian? It is developing a relationship with God and living for him. It is the decision to no longer live for ourselves or our pleasures and interests, and to give our lives totally to God. It is falling in love with God and his ways. It is discovering life as we become closer to him and learn his will for our lives on a daily basis. It is coming alive to joy and the fullness of what we were created for. It is learning that the laws of God are the moral laws built into the universe, and understanding that they are the secret to life. It is so much more than just having our sins forgiven. It is growing every day in our relationship with God and learning to be faithful to him as we mature as his disciples. It is developing our relationships with other Christians and becoming a part of the family of God. Contrast a person who only wants to be a ticket carrying Christian to what Paul was talking about when he wrote: “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Philippians 3:8-11).
And this is not just for our personal benefit, but so that we may be a blessing to the world. A couple of days ago Sue and I received a letter from a campus minister that we help support, and in his letter he had a line that caught my attention. It was a sort of purpose statement that said that he was in ministry, “...so that everyone may know someone who truly follows Jesus.” I thought, “That’s it. That’s what this is all about, that our lives might be a living video of what it means to be a Christ follower.” That is so much more than just someone who has been forgiven. It means that we display in our lives what it means to love, to forgive, to show mercy, to be kind, authentic and good. Maybe you think you have your ticket, but you have never entered into the kind of life that mirrors the life of Jesus. What good is the ticket if you never walk into the theater? And what you discover as you walk into the theater is that you are not there to be entertained, you are supposed to take your place on the stage and become one of the players. You are to live out on that stage what it looks like to be a person who follows Jesus so well that others want to join you and become a part of the play themselves.
This is more than just doing a few good deeds, this is a matter of being a transformed person. It is not a matter of correcting a few things on the outside, but becoming a new person on the inside. This week Warren Buffet announced that he was giving his fortune to charity. Buffett is worth $44 billion just in stocks. He is giving away $37 billion dollars and most of that will go to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I was interested to read that in presenting the gift to the Gates, he made the remark, “There is more than one way to get to heaven, but this is a great way.” If money could buy your way into heaven then Mr. Buffett was right and he would have done it in spades, but fortunately for all of us who do not have a billion dollars, a million dollars or even a thousand dollars to throw around, it is not about money. It misses the point, because heaven is not for sale. You cannot buy your ticket. Heaven is not for those who do something remarkable, it is for those who live unremarkable lives, but who live them faithfully, lovingly and joyfully every day. It is not about just believing in Jesus, it is about knowing Jesus. It is not just about knowing Jesus, it is about following Jesus. It is not just about following Jesus, it is about losing your life, taking up your cross and making God’s will your will. It means denying yourself, forgiving your enemies, loving and caring for the outcast. Max Lucado writes about the end of those who are merely “I got my ticket” Christians: “Consider, then, this explanation of hell: Hell is the chosen place of the person who loves self more than God, who loves sin more than his Savior, who loves this world more than Gods world. Judgment is that moment when God looks at the rebellious and says, ‘Your choice will be honored.’”
The third objection I have to ticket theology is: It reduces the Christian life to a formula. It makes becoming a Christian a one time event rather than a life-long experience of growth in God — loving him, learning his ways, maturing in our ability to obey and trust him, being transformed into his likeness and serving the hurting and helpless. If all you are worried about is the magic formula: believing in God, saying the right prayer, getting baptized the right way and avoiding the major sins, knowing and keeping the list of do’s and don’ts, then you are following a formula rather than living a life of faith. You are believing in some formula to save you, and you have avoided having an ongoing relationship with God.
The writer of Hebrews was concerned about the spiritual immaturity of the people of his day. They were merely skimming the surface of the Christian life, so he wrote: “Though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness” (Hebrews 5:12-13).
The apostle Paul said that we were to, “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ” (Ephesians 4:13-15). This is more than just being saved from our sins, it is being saved from stupidity, futility, negativism and despair. It means seeing the world with new eyes and living in it in a new way.
Spiritual maturity begins by recognizing that the Christian life is not about a change in what we do, it is about a change in who we are — our thoughts, choices, feelings and disposition. This kind of reformation of the heart changes how we feel about things, it radically revises and reverses the things we care about. Our will is transformed. Our affections are redirected. Dallas Willard, in his marvelous book Renovation of the Heart, says, “Those who are not genuinely convinced that the only real bargain in life is surrendering ourselves to Jesus and his cause, abandoning all that we love to him and for him, cannot learn the other lessons Jesus has to teach us.” In one of the most powerful passages in the book, he writes: “The impression gained by most who hear about ‘counting the cost’ of following Jesus is one of how terrible and painful that cost is. But to count the cost is to take into consideration both the losses and the gains of all possible courses of action, to see which is most beneficial. ...The cost of non-discipleship would then be seen for what it is — unbearable. That is why one would become able to sustain cheerfully the much smaller ‘cost of discipleship’ to him.”
Some of you are may have seen the film Beyond the Gates of Splendor , the film documentary which tells the true story of five American missionaries: Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian, who in January 1956 were killed by the very people they were trying to reach and help. They were speared to death in the jungles of Ecuador by the Waodani Indians, and their bodies were found floating in the river or strewn along the bank. At first it seemed that the Waodani were opening up to them and becoming friendly, but through a strange turn of events they fiercely turned on the missionaries. What is amazing is that several family members of the slain missionaries returned to live among the tribe and minister to the very people who had killed their loved ones. In one scene of the movie, Kathy and Steve Saint, children of Nate Saint, spoke of what it was like to be baptized by the Waodani who are now followers of Christ. Kimo, one of the Waodani who participated in the killing of Kathy and Steve’s father, talked about Steve’s baptism: “By his father’s grave we did it when Steve was a little older. It was right up the river there. He brought his mother too.” Kathy says, “I was in the same water where my dad’s body had been thrown, and at either side of me were the two men that in their youth had killed dad. And all I knew was that I really loved these two guys.”
That’s what Christianity looks like. It is a renovation of the heart that sees people with new eyes and loves them from a new heart. When Christ comes into our lives the world becomes a different place. It is not just about being forgiven, it is about experiencing the truth of the scripture that says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Rodney J. Buchanan
July 2, 2006
Mulberry St. UMC
Mount Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
