Memo:
I am inclined to believe that God has some high hopes for those who choose to banner themselves with his name. I say “hopes” but perhaps, more accurately, expectations. If there is one thing that Jesus had no patience for it was half-assery, the luke-warm, the on-the-fence, the complacent, the ones who know the truth and are not set free.
Get in or get out.
That seems to be the unflinching message of Jesus. I believe this statement to be true: Jesus Hates Mediocrity. And yet everywhere I go I find it in mass quantities; Christians with whose lives I am thoroughly unimpressed, stagnant, gross.
I’m done. It’s almost unbearable. But perhaps the problem is me, yes that is a very real possibility. Because I don’t want to do one more bible study. I don’t want to sit in one more circle and talk about what a verse means to me. I don’t want to fill in one more blank. I don’t want to spend one more Sunday lunch talking about what a sermon meant to us. We are not becoming better people, we are not building anything, we are stagnant, we are the complacent, we are the boring, yes- we are the white washed tombs. Death looks like apathy, death sounds like sarcasm.
Give me real, don’t give me fake.
I want to build something.
That is what I want:
To build
Something.
Because I think we are supposed to, I think we are put on this earth to build. To build ourselves into something new, always new, always new. To be creative, to grow and stretch. And I think that we are supposed to grow and stretch in significant ways, I don’t want one more person’s goal to be, “I really need to have a better impact on my unsaved friends”, have a better impact on me damn it, I need you. I need you to be everything you are supposed to be, you’re cheating me, do you know? With every surface level conversation, with every church polished cliché about Jesus and God and “believers”, I don’t want to hear it. I want you to swear because of fucking poverty, I want to feel things inside you, I want you to feel them for yourself, I want you to make me feel them too. I want you to come alive, I want you to stop caring what I think; what do I know anyways? Am I judging you? Absolutely I am. I am judging you every moment you sit quiet, I am judging every sarcastic copout that comes out of your mouth, so you might as well say something good, you might was well piss me off with who you really are so that maybe you could change me.
Please change me. I’m begging you. Really.
Mike,
This is really good. I have these thoughts often but have not been able to put them into words (funny I know since I am a writer). I too get tired of the pointless bible studies, with people not being real, not doing what God commands us to. I want to do something to change the world for him but yet constantly fall flat. Anyway, great post.
Wyndi Veigel
February 28, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I don’t even know what to say. Your right.
Julia Hull
March 2, 2009 at 4:36 pm
Mike, good post bro. Very real, pissed, but well communicated. However, unless this was written towards one person specifically, I have to disagree with you and with wyndi. I think that people are fake because they are allowed to be. I think they are fake because they afraid of you or me or whoever. I think they are fake because we are fake. By watching someone be unreal, fake and non feeling, but not saying something is just as much fake as them. The people I give permission to speak into my life ( you being one) are people that i know will be real with me and tell me the truth. I think that if we want to the people around us to be real, engaging, and aware that they need to offer themselves to us and to the world. We have to tell them and then do it with them.
Building things sounds great and fun. But the truth about building is that is sucks. It’s hard, it takes forever and then people run off when it isn’t as easy it seemed. The truth is few people will actually do it. You have to start and then hope to God someone will help.
Josh
March 2, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Just dropping by.Btw, you website have great content!
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Itzel
March 3, 2009 at 6:42 am
Enjoy your posts. Consider getting back in the game.
Ryan Flemmings
April 22, 2009 at 12:32 am
This is exactly how I feel right now!
moosetraks
May 22, 2009 at 2:32 pm
This was a heated post Mike. I can sympathize. Check out this quote by Mother Teresa. I think it’s really insightful.
“It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.”
Josh Tilford
August 4, 2009 at 2:19 pm