Leave It All Behind

Making a commitment to follow Jesus Christ is a personal decision. No one can make that choice for you, or make you follow if you don’t want to. In a culture that tells you nothing is more right than anything else and we must tolerate everything, why do people get so bent out of shape about Christianity, like Gumby on a hot day?

I think they get upset because it’s personal for them, too. You’ve made a choice to change your life, your beliefs, your values, and implicitly that says their values are worth less to you now.

But we are our values. We are what we believe. Their identity is wrapped up in their beliefs the same way believing in Christ has changed your identity.

You’re walking away from an old life. It feels like you’re walking away from them.

I’m reading a book on the history of the Cherokee people. One of the tribe’s chiefs was John Ridge. His father was Cherokee. His mother was born to a Scotsman and his Cherokee wife. John Ridge grew up Cherokee and later married a Cherokee woman, Susanna. They had half-blood friends, and though Cherokee men didn’t generally farm, Ridge and Susanna did. They also sent their children John and Nancy to a local missionary school, and later son John furthered his education in Connecticut.

The missionaries shared the gospel and encouraged salvation and baptism, of course, and some did it well and others didn’t. One fact that stands out to me is that the missionaries didn’t understand the values and mindset of the Cherokee. This hindered their work. Ridge the elder said he couldn’t follow Christ if it meant repudiating his culture.

In Mark 10: 17-27, Jesus told the rich young ruler that he had to give up everything. “Come, follow me.” The man walked away sadly, “because he was very rich.” That was his culture, so to speak, and he was unwilling to set it aside to follow Christ. From that passage, we learn we must give up what we had known before.

But the apostle Paul also says, "To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some." 1 Corinthians 9:20-22 How does that fit in to the walking away from everything idea?

There are pieces of our culture that are diametrically opposed to Christ. No question. But then there are other aspects of our culture that don’t go against Scripture. Perhaps we can keep some of that, and in that way not alienate our friends and family to the point that they repudiate Christ rather than leave what they have always know.

I’m speaking specifically of family or faith traditions that don’t fit with what you now believe. For instance, in the past 15 years, I’ve been to a Christmas Eve service once and Easter twice. Why? Those are so important in our Christian beliefs!

That’s true, but so is my family. My faith is not destroyed by spending Christmas Eve at the table instead of in the pew. If my nieces and nephews were baptized as infants, I could attend that celebration and in my own heart commit to sharing Christ with them as they grow. Standing at the baptismal font is not the place to wax eloquent about the futility of infant baptism.

Whatever we do, we want our joy and changed lives to glow like lights in the darkness. That’s what will draw them to Christ.