The above image is a familiar one to many of us. It’s inspired by Jesus’s words in Revelation 3:20 – “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” Or, another way to put it, “Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.” This verse is sometimes misused, and some good explanations can be found here and here. Jesus is addressing the Laodicean church, a church characterized by wealth, self-satisfaction, self-sufficiency, and a lukewarm attitude toward Jesus. Sound familiar? That’s a pretty good description of most of the church in America. If you don’t agree, just stick with me here and we’ll discuss it together.
The purpose of this series of posts (my first, maybe my only) is to look at the ways in which the church in America has marginalized Jesus, His words, His works and His ways. For those of us who are Christians, we claim that Jesus is our Lord. If He is Lord, He must be in the center, at the focus of all we do and say. Far too often, His words mean little to us. We claim a “high view of Scripture” yet we ignore or explain away far too many of Jesus’s words and actions. It reminds me of the following scene from one of my favorite movies:
There are several points in the Gospels in which Jesus says something shocking and his disciples respond more or less with “won’t that be nice?” But we do the same. We act like he is just kidding around. We explain away a hard saying or just leave it on the shelf or in some other way conclude that it doesn’t apply to us. The American church has no excuse not to follow all the teachings of Jesus. We have a very high percentage of believers, material prosperity, freedom and access to spiritual teaching and resources that are easily available to us. No other country has all those factors. Take a look at this chart, showing percentages of evangelical Protestants in each country. I know some countries are heavily Catholic or Orthodox. The leaders of those groups can deal with their issues. I am an American Protestant and I want to deal with the problems of the American Protestants.
A couple notes about this chart. The USA is ranked pretty high, but there are countries ranked higher. These are countries in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and the Caribbean where the evangelical churches have grown tremendously in recent decades. Praise God! But this also means they are new believers with issues to work through, lack of established institutions, and other needs. This should be expected. What’s our excuse? Second, look through this list, and see if you find any other countries you could consider “prosperous.” The only possible one is Brazil, where there are prosperous areas and groups within a very large country, along with severe poverty and needs much greater than those in the United States. Most of these countries are small and politically insignificant (most of us couldn’t find them on a map) and dealing with a great deal of poverty and systemic internal challenges. Has your church sent mission trips to any of these places? I thought so. They have needs. Again, what’s our excuse? I understand that the media has made out American society to be coming apart at the seams, but it’s not because we don’t have good Christian teaching available to us, freedom and prosperity, but because we’re more interested in our lawns, in Keeping Up with the Kardashians and getting into futile political arguments than we are in following Jesus.
Please understand that I am approaching these difficult subjects for my own growth as well as that of others. If any self-righteousness comes through, I hope I can see it, acknowledge it and change. That’s one of the dangers in calling oneself and others to more faithful living.
Let’s put Jesus in the center, where He belongs. Not because we feel sorry for Him, because He needs nothing from us, but because it is better for us and the world. He longs for us to follow Him more closely, not because He needs it but because we do and He loves to meet our greatest needs.
Please leave your comments.
HIS WORDS, HIS WORKS, HIS WAYS 