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Just take your friend to church and let the special evangelist introduce them to Jesus with their five minute Amway type spiel, then allow the government certified “follow up team” to walk them through the complexity of life in Christ with a five week course while you go and do what you are called to do.
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It is little wonder we don’t live it. We are trying to reason and convince people with human arguments. If we can put across a convincing argument then they are acting out of human reasoning. This is a soft coversion because there is no revelation and someone who is smarter than them will always be able to change their mind at some point.

At the same time people who argue that life will be great as a Christian and you will have no troubles are trying to hit the demographic that are having a hard life. They think it will all go away and life will all be candy and flowers. When the going gets tough, they figure they must have been lied to and this whole God thing is a big hoax.

Then there are the denominational churches trying to tap into the youth culture with their crazy youth group antics and their programs that almost always have to have a tacky acronym associated with it. Sure it is fine to have fun, but let’s not kid ourselves that we can make out God to be cool. It makes me mad to think that we are going to dumb God down so much that he has to fit into our pointless and desultory culture.

Surely if we truly have the respect and awe of God we will quit dumbing him down. We will take a look around us and each other and thing… wow…. God made all this stuff. God doesn’t need our marketing, programs and systems. What he needs is for us to truly understand the magnitude of him. To try and grasp the things he has done for us. Like how he made a universe science cannot get it’s head around, created a concept called time that physicists cannot get a handle on while at the same time demonstrated love beyond explanation, and sacrifice beyond comprehension.

I think we all need to get out of our selfish little worlds, take a few steps back every day, drop all our worldly knowledge and culture and put things into perspective. I think that this raw truth of God is all we need to show people. Then once they are broken before God they realize that they are (in comparison) nothing. From that place we all can come to him and he will build us up in his love and we will have a meaningful relationship with him in the right context. The context of our lives being centred around him, not trying to make God center around us.

Thanks for your comments.

I think it’s a shame that you misunderstood the main point of the article and that you think that Jesus is fruity.

The point of the article was that every day, non clergy, Christian people can and should walk in a consistent high level of spirituality.

You said, “I think Jesus wasn’t all that down to earth, I think he would have appeared fruity to a lot of people”.

I didn’t say that Jesus was down to earth, I said He was “the most highly spiritual being the planet has ever seen” and “in a lot of respects He was a fairly normal guy.”

Your down to earth quote came from the opening statement which says, “Many people think that in order to be spiritual you need to be somewhat fruity, having a strange eerie manner about you. Others believe in a more relaxed down to earth lifestyle which sometimes leans towards carnal worldly living”.

This opening comment was speaking against the extremes of being a fruitcake with very little real spirituality or being a carnal, mediocre person.

Your scriptures from John do not paint a picture of a fruity Jesus but of a carnal minded, stumbling people (the Jews He was speaking to) who thought He was fruity or “nuts” while they should have understood His covenant language. Jesus was presenting Himself as the eternal Lamb of God who is the fulfilment of the Passover feast. This may be fruity to our western, carnal mindsets but it should have made perfect sense to His hearers.

I, and the article in question do agree with you, James, that Jesus was somewhat enigmatic and counter culture but I don’t see what’s the problem with calling Jesus the carpenters son “a fairly normal guy” who “was the most highly spiritual being the planet has ever seen”.

As for the nerd deal, that speaks into a culture or style of person and has nothing to do with spirituality. Being or not being a nerd is trivial.

I do, however fully endorse being a Jesus freak but not just a freak for the sake of freakiness. Yes we will “seem strange to people who do not know him yet” in some respects but if we are just freaks on every level then that is just silly. We should have a fairly normal life amongst normal people, working, eating, laughing as well as other human like behaviour.

You said, “I’ve tried hard to relate to people who aren’t Christians and tried to seem ‘on their level’, but it has meant I have sacrificed my integrity and forsaken Christ to appear ‘normal’”.

Dude that’s horrific. I don’t actually try to relate to pre-Christians, I just do. I surf like a lot of people, I have a family like most, I even eat at McDonalds (God forbid) but being normal and relevant in many ways doesn’t mean I am “on their level” in spirituality and righteousness and it definitely doesn’t cause me to “sacrifice my integrity” or “forsake Christ”. I do know what you mean though, because we all can go overboard in our fitting in and slide on into the land of compromise. I don’t believe that we should be try hards with the relevance deal.

Remember, the point of the article is that we would all live in the midst of this dark society as the light of the world.

Having said all that, I think you sound like a sincere Jesus warrior who would be pretty normal yet highly extraordinary. My heart and prayers are for you.

Peace

Bretto

51I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

    52Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

    53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.

People must have thought He was nuts.

He said other weird stuff too. Sometimes I’m tempted to agree with Christians who say that Christians aren’t ‘nerds’ or ‘freaks’ or whatever, but when it comes down to it, we are. When we act how Christ wants us to act we will seem strange to people who do not know him yet.

I’ve tried hard to relate to people who aren’t Christians and tried to seem ‘on their level’, but it has meant I have sacrificed my integrity and forsaken Christ to appear ‘normal’. I fully relate to the passage about being a ‘double minded man’… It pierces my heart every time I read it. I pray that God will help me remember who I am, in him. And I pray that as James suggests I will be a doer of the word, not just a hearer.