Discipleship
So this is a mixture of blog and mental diarrhoea. I haven’t written a blog in a very long time because in all honesty my life has been a mess. It fell apart and I’m slowly putting it back together. I’m still a mess but I have hope.
The thing thats on my mind at the moment at though and the challenge I have faced lately is to understand what ‘Discipleship” is. It’s one of those Christian words that we use far too much despite not really understanding it. We’ve even made courses on it and I’m sire my opinions of those courses will be made clear shortly I’m sure.
So why is discipleship important? well because although I’m not necessarily a good Christian and lately feel very much aggressive towards my own faith I am a Christian a believe Jesus died for my sins and I believe the bible is the word of God. Sorry if that seems crazy to you but honestly I have thought it through! and so as a result of this belief I take very serious the direct pro active order of Jesus Christ to go out and make disciples of all nations.
But what does this look like? My fear is that for the majority of the Christian faith this has become about telling people ‘now your a christian this is how you live your life.’ This is scary to me. To so many people one of the greatest commands of my faith has quite simply become don’t have sex, don’t be gay, don’t do this, don’t touch that and don’t talk to them.
More than anything discipleship has become “I’m right your wrong you need to be like me!” this repulses me. As part of my personal journey for a long time I have been very opinionated I would say I am and I always have been it’s part of who I am however I don’t want to force my opinions on others (although sometimes I certainly do.) More than that I don’t want to take those without formed opinions and I don’t want to make them carbon copies of me. Partly this comes from doing a youth work degree and firmly believing that empowerment is a key principal to helping people learn. This also comes however from my passion for one book of the bible.
Job.
My uncle once told me that Job was the best book of the bible, so I read it, he was right.
Job is a man whose life goes wrong in every way, his family, his home and his livelihood were taken away from him. Then those around and gathered around him and tried to give him answers and failed. Job rallies against these friends and rails against God metaphorically shaking his fist at the heavens. Gods response to all this cufuffle? He quite simply says to Job Why are you trying to understand this? I’m God, you can’t understand me.
I have found this right I have many times found myself waving my metaphorical fists and in these times God hasn’t answered me but my understanding that I don’t understand God has grown and I have become more comfortable in this. I guess i kind of hope my post modern views come from the bible but I am sure they are mildly shaped by my culture.
This isn’t my only problem with the Christian machine that is discipleship as it has been in previous generations. The other problem is this. To often I have seen Christians giving answers to people that have told that they were wrong and I have seen them crushed, I have seen them lose faith and worst of all I have seen people begin to believe that God hates them and this breaks my heart and I hope that this heart break is shared my God, I believe it is. What have these people been condemned for then? sometimes sin, but from my experience the majority of sinners hide behind church doors. The thing I see people condemned for most is there humanity and there struggle with humanity. I don’t wanna condemn that I want to journey with that God given identity. I also want to explore what it is to be human with these people. This doesn’t involve giving answers.
For me this is Discipleship. To journey with people alongside them and instead of giving them answers, give them questions. In these questions they may find answers or they may find more questions but my prayer and my passion is they discover who it is that God made.
G.K.Chesterton once said ‘to believe is human, to doubt divine.’ I believe this reflects something that is central to discipleship. It’s easy to convince people of something and it’s natural to convince people your right. More than that it is natural to want to believe something and so to take something from someone else and adopt that is something of an easy way out. The challenge is to wrestle to ask questions and to search for exactly who God made when God made us.
To stop being Jakob and let God show us Israel.
“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield,
but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling Your mercy in my success alone;
But let me find the grasp of Your hand in my failure.”
by Rabindranath Tagore
