The Great Adventure

Ahhhh, summer. Baseball, sunshine, barbecues, and beaches. It truly is a wonderful time of year. The slumber of winter is now a distant memory as nature shakes of the last remnants of spring sleepiness. School is out, jobs have started, and life is altogether different than it was just a few short months ago. With so much more time on my hands, I find myself constantly falling back into my old habit of isolating myself from the world and escaping into various virtual realities. From the world's perspective, there isn't anything wrong with this lifestyle. In fact, advertisements often encourage it. No need to worry about real problems, just spend your life immersed in manufactured romances, adventures, and conflicts. One of the great lies of this generation is that all these things are worth our time our affection, and our worship.

This got me thinking, why do sports and video games appeal to me so much? With these, there is an artificial sense of adventure, courage, dedication, and sacrifice involved. The possibility of success and failure, the worthy cause, the steadfast advance in the face of danger; these stir up a sense of excitement inside of me. After finishing a game or watching my favorite team win a championship, I feel a brief sense of accomplishment. A lot of these things aren't inherently evil, and when used appropriately, they can be effective means of building community. However, all too often they become idols used to avoid reality.

Here's the crazy part: these emotions and feelings of accomplishment that we get? They are gifts from God. God's gifts are good. Always. But He has far more in store for us than merely mastering a jump shot or completing the Legend of Zelda twelve times. He calls us to live a life of real adventure, risk, and uncertainty here and now, for the advancement of his Kingdom. I have been reading through Acts recently and I am struck by how exciting Peter, Paul, and others lives are. It's got everything a good adventure needs: courageous heroes, a worthy cause, severe hardship, timely miracles, even shipwrecks. True Christianity is not boring! Why do we search for the fulfillment of our desires in petty, earthly things when God offers of fullness of life here and now?

We settle for so little, my friends. Especially us Christians. We claim to believe in a God that can heal the sick, stop the sun, and conquer evil, yet we rarely bother to ask Him to do such things today. I don't want to settle for "safe" Christianity. You know the deal. Private school/homeschool through high school, church activities are main social outlet, go to a Christian college and find a spouse, get a steady job, and raise a bunch of kids to repeat the process. These things are great, and God calls many to marriage and "ordinary" jobs, but look at the lives of early Christians! Even those who continued to work full time led lives that could hardly be considered normal. They experienced miraculous signs and wonders, saw people added to the church daily, and got the opportunity to provide financial support for the radical evangelists. Friends, regardless of what my role is, I want to be part of a church like this!

Perhaps part of the problem is the "Christianese" language we have adopted. Believe it or not, the phrase "personal relationship with Jesus" doesn't ever appear in scripture. I don’t know about you, but that phrase strikes me as a little feminine. I understand that it often helps people dispose of the notion that we have to earn our way to heaven, and it is probably a great metaphor for women who have experienced broken relationships in the past. But let's not try to reduce Almighty God to some kind of cosmic significant other. What if we instead asked men and women to "enlist in the spiritual army of the most high God"? Job description: “overcome the powers of darkness with relentless love, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the living word of God.” I recognize that metaphors are incomplete and that one is not necessarily better than all others in all circumstances. My point is that Christianity is more like an epic quest than a sentimental dating relationship. It is rarely safe, easy, or comforting. It involves danger, risk, and pain, but also immeasurable reward. Will you embark on the journey?