The Porpoise Diving Life – Day 78 – Back Off

Day 78

Back Off!

According to some sources, populations of Porpoise, Dolphins, Whales are being harmed by man’s penchant for observing them. Boats full of tourists track down these creatures so they can have photographs to show everybody they did something wonderful when they get home.

You can’t touch, smell, or taste a Porpoise. We can only see them from a distance. Why is it then that we attempt to package God and deliver Him to the doorsteps of people? Maybe Christians need to back off.

When I was in middle school, my friends and I were constantly on the look out for cool stuff to do to keep us entertained. As we walked by our neighborhood church, we decided to check the doors. The back door was open. We snuck around the hallways and nobody was there. We had the whole place to our selves. My buddy Dickie noticed how slippery the floors were. Mr. Jorgensen the janitor had recently finished waxing the floors beneath the pews in the sanctuary. Dickie whispered, “follow me!”

We went to the first row of pews by the altar. Dickie got down, flipped onto his back and grabbed the back of the pew above him. He pushed off with his feet as he pulled with his arms. He went sliding about four rows back with this motion. In a matter of seconds, we heard a “bonk” and Dickie popped up, rubbing the top of his head from slamming into the wall of the sanctuary behind the final row of pews. Dickie ran down the aisle toward us, snickering with joy. We all lined up, flat on our backs underneath the first row of pews. We spent the next half hour in the first ever unofficially sanctioned, Olympic pew sliding competition. We had a blast!

When I talk to people about the Christian faith, I don’t hear people talk enough about the joy of the spontaneity of it all. I don’t think Christianity was ever intended to be a spectator sport. Too many Christians have become tourists, recounting the memories of their last adventure on the seas of faith. Many even pay to go on adventures to distant lands to gather photographs of the Holy Land or lost people in foreign lands.

The land you are living on today is holy. This is the place and today is the moment that you are intended to be present and prepared to be the one whose Name you claim. It seems to me that Christianity in the developed, western world has come up with guidance mechanisms that have taken us to the wrong place. Consider the following that illustrates my point:

“Some Christians think that faith is like a set of MapQuest directions.—that there is only one single way to God. After all, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the father except by me.” He is the map and Christianity has become a kind of vacation destination, a place you wind up in to escape hell. Such Christians claim that God has a plan for your life, a route you must follow or you will be lost in this life—and damned in the next. They even have “four spiritual laws” and “forty days of purpose” that tell you how to get there. Like computer-generated directions, this road is predetermined, distant and authoritative. You cannot exit this freeway or deviate from this route without peril.”[i]

During my life I have spent too much time seated in the pews looking straight ahead. I’ve even paid to go on guided junkets attempting to capture pictures of God. I couldn’t wait to get home from those missions to share the pictures with others that portrayed what I had done. Yet, I’ve learned the hard way that this activity probably annoys God, just as the boatloads of tourists annoy the Whales, Dolphins and Porpoise.

My challenge today is to continue to learn a new way to follow Jesus. Just like the day in that empty church, I am learning to hear the spontaneous call of Jesus to “follow Me.” This requires a change in posture, new ways of navigating the Way ahead. Perhaps, “Jesus is not a MapQuest sort of map, a superhighway to salvation? What if Jesus is more like old-fashioned street signs, navigated by imagination and intuition? When Jesus said, “Follow Me,” he did not say “Follow the map.” Rather, he invited people to follow Him, to walk with Him on a pilgrimage toward God.” [ii]

Read the New Testament with these lenses on: How many times do you recognize Jesus confronting those who were religious tour guides? Those who had a vested interest in maintaining the flow of people to walk in accordance with the map they had prepared? Listen to Jesus as He tells them to back off! Listen to Jesus as he calls people to walk with Him on the pilgrimage toward God, to walk in a new Way with Him.

NOTES


[i] Butler-Bass, Diana Christianity For The Rest of Us – How The Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith, HarperSanFrancisco – A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc. HarperCollinsPublishers, Copyright © 2006 by Diana Butler Bass, p. 72.

[ii] Butler-Bass, Diana Christianity For The Rest of Us – How The Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith, HarperSanFrancisco – A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Diana Butler Bass, p. 72.

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