Discipline: aka, Training

Me and Discipline…yeah. We don’t get along. I’m a free spirit, man. Who needs routines and schedules? They mess with my…er…free-ness. Time constraints put a damper on my creativity. Artists don’t need watches unless they’re writing about them or painting them.

They also help you stay organized and build character and pass exams and graduate and have a life…and, most importantly, be tight with Jesus.

I think for a while I was under some kind of delusion that the above paragraph was actually legitimate and I lived by that philosophy. And then it took me a year and a half longer to graduate from internet high school, at which point I rethought this and realized it was basically total fish guts. Aside from the laziness (physical and spiritual) that living like this cultivated in me, it’s irrational. Never scheduling/planning means I had LESS time to do what I actually wanted to do, and could never relax while doing it because I knew I hadn’t done all the things I had to do. Laziness, anyone will tell you, is a hard habit to break. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a way of thinking. Try and change your way of thinking and see how far you get.

Sin technically only exists if you believe in God, and if you don’t then it’s all about morality, which is relative, and that discussion never ends. But sin and its consequences are actually super practical, and I’m always surprised that people who don’t think there is such a thing…don’t think there is such a thing. Before Christ, we have this concept that God is restrictive, that sin = freedom. Okay. So using that logic, yay! I’m free to get as drunk as I want! Of course, this means being crazy sick the next day and being a useless lug and not getting anything done. So…I’m free to fail at life! Also, I’m free to sleep with as many people as I want! Meaning I’m free to get VD and totally mess up my emotional life and live in a soap opera where everything is wrong all the time and not be able to have a good, solid marriage one day. Yeah…that doesn’t sound like freedom to me, and if that IS freedom, I don’t want it.

The biggest sins in my own life are laziness, being judgmental, my out of control tongue, and…laziness. These don’t seem so bad on the surface (compared to murder or whatever), but they are REALLY, really bad. And I can’t fix them on my own…I’ve tried. The best I’ve managed to do in my own power is to not do ONE of these things for about 30 minutes. It’s like trying to plug twenty holes with ten fingers. If we don’t surrender to Christ, we don’t change, not really. It’s really rather simple…now if we can just apply it.

But luckily, if our hearts are to follow after Christ, he won’t just leave our lazy, judgmental behinds lying in the dust. He uses things in our lives that act as sandpaper to work off all the rough edges, and sometimes he uses a chisel or a knife to break and cut off things that shouldn’t be there. It isn’t pleasant if we just focus on the thing itself, but when we realize that God is sovereign over everything and that his hand is in everything, it’s encouraging. A father disciplines his children, not some random stranger off the street. When God disciplines us it’s out of love, and it’s evidence that we are truly his children. Oswald Chambers wrote something along these lines…that there are storms in our lives, but that Jesus in always in the clouds (Revelation 1:7). If we have the faith to see him in the storm, we’ll know that there are no coincidences, that his hand is over everything in our lives, and that everything is an opportunity to learn something from God. One of the most dangerous prayers is “Jesus, mold me and change me.” If you pray this, hang onto your seat. Or actually, let go.

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

At a secular university (most likely at any university, but this is not about any university), you are expected to be able to defend (in the sense of defining, logically explaining, supporting with evidence and/or logical steps originating from a proven premise, etc) what you think and believe, and why you think and believe it. At least this is my experience at UCT in Cape Town, South Africa, in the Humanities faculty. And although I’m going to talk specifically about the Department of Religious Studies, it is by no means limited to the department. Maybe I’ve just met all the nerds in the faculty, and I know I can’t place everyone under this banner, but Humanities (for those of us who actually want to be here and are not just doing a BA so we can slack off) is about receiving knowledge, challenging it, transforming it, and updating it. Nothing is fact; everything is under trial, and we are the judges. I’m not just saying this, either; the vice chancellor himself told us this on the first day. You kind of get into this mindset after a while, and it’s not surprising that people take it outside their lectures and tuts.

This semester, I am taking a religious studies course called Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. I knew going into this that it was going to be intense, and after just the first tut, I knew it like I know the sun comes up every morning. It was different studying religions that I’ve had very little contact with, that are not evangelist religions, and that are somewhere far, far away across the ocean. But this…this is intense.I knew going into this that I would be walking a very fine line between trying to be objective in the study of religion, and actually compromising on what is true and right. It was different, but already challenging, in the first semester, because we weren’t studying Christianity. Now, though, we will be, and after the first tut it’s clear that there are going to be some heavy discussions.

In the first place, saying you’re a Christian, especially in this course, is like sticking a sign on your forehead that reads, “Don’t take anything I say seriously because I’m one of those hypocritical, arrogant people who think they’re perfect and are narrow-minded and petty.” This is, and not without reason, the perception many people have of Christians and Christianity. We – and not even all of us anymore, but that’s a whole other story – are one of the very few (and I actually think the only one) faith groups who still stick to our guns; we say Jesus is the only way to God, period. Most, if not all, religions have for the most part evolved to say that you just do your thing, whatever works for you is right, there are many paths to God, or even that you are God. Unitarian churches are becoming more and more popular, and entire organizations have it as their mission to find commonality in all religions and make people tolerant of each other’s beliefs. Many Christians have even adopted this attitude, the one that is peaceful and “okay” and not horrendously intolerant.

Christianity is “intolerant.” It is politically incorrect, it is discriminatory, it is offensive. I say all this with a touch of sarcasm because these are human terms and human concepts, terms created to protect human rights which actually do not exist and which change according to what fad is currently popular in politics. The love of Christ is open to anyone and everyone, but demands our all.

But Christianity, at least the Christianity that is truly following Christ and having a personal relationship with him, is not a religion. Yes, there is a Christian religion, and it is no different from the Jewish religion or the Muslim religion or any other religion there is. Religion is, according to my lecturer, a way of thinking, a way of living, and a social behavior pattern. It is, in other words, a human thing. It is a way for humans to think, it is a way for humans to live, and a way for humans to conduct themselves socially. I completely agree with him. Religion is a human institution, created by humans, kept alive by humans, for humans. It’s a safety net and a driving force, a weapon and a tool.

Christianity, the real Christianity, is none of these things. It displays some of the same elements, but to study it in this way is to approach it from the wrong end. We do not have a religion because we have a doctrine, a set of rules, and popes and bishops and priests and whatever else. We are not spiritual, we are not righteous, because we follow God’s commands. We follow God’s commands because we are righteous. When we become Christians, we are cleansed by the blood of Christ, washed completely clean, and the Holy Spirit lives in us, making us righteous by his mercy, grace, and power; we cannot become righteous by trying to follow the 10 commandments. It is out of the strength he gives us, and more importantly, out of the love he enables us to have for Jesus, that we do what pleases God. It is not like an abused wife who does what her husband says because she fears him, or like the wife in a boring, dead marriage who does what she should because it’s expected; it’s like the wife who is both passionately loved by and is passionately in love with her husband, and who naturally does what she knows will please him, for the sake of pleasing him.

Fear and guilt no longer play a part, because we now have a relationship with the living God, who is our savior, father, and friend. We do what he wants us to because we love him, and because we want to please him. It is a relationship, not a religion.

So my dilemma in this course is: do I accept that there is such a thing as a Christian religion (which there is), and study it from that perspective, leaving everyone to their assumptions and opinions, or do I say something? Saying something would mean not only saying the actual thing, but also explaining it, meaning going into the heart of the truth – Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life. Meaning, of course, sounding like an intolerant, discriminating fool and/or lunatic. But that has always been the price, and it’s not even fine print. The New Testament writers make no secret of it that they faced serious trials, much worse than what we face now in westernized countries (for the most part). Having a tut group think I’m a non-functioning, narrow-minded, look-at-the-pretty-lights human being is much more preferable than being boiled in oil or crucified, upside down or right side up, or bring beheaded (probably the best way to go, if you have to pick one of these). But is it my place, in a course which objectively, almost scientifically looks at these religions, to say something?

I have clearly heard God telling me, since the beginning of the year, the following…though of course none of these are new revelations, but things rarely feel relevant to us when we’re not in a position to need them.
1. He is God. He does not need defending, he does not need to be stood up for.
2. The truth does not need defending or to be stood up for.
3. But the truth does have to be spoken.

In other words, it is not my place to fight with people, to get into niggling debates with them, or to prove that I’m right. It has nothing to do with me at all. It is my place – and not only that, but my responsibility and my, and every Christian’s, calling – to speak the truth; to tell of Jesus and his love; to explain in whatever words the Holy Spirit puts in my mouth what it’s actually all about…while, of course, acknowledging that the Christian religion is different and separate from following Christ. The purpose, after all, is not to tell people their ideas and preconceptions about Christianity are wrong. It is to, in the most familiar, most Biblical words, preach the gospel, in and out of season (2 Timothy 4:2), in all circumstances and to all peoples and nations (Matthew 28:18-20). We cannot convert people; that is something only the Holy Spirit can do, and the word convert has connotations that make me hesitant to use it now, so let me rather say transform. One human cannot transform another; only God can do that. We are the sowers of the seed of the gospel of truth, we are the carriers of the message. We can speak the truth, we can pray for others, we can ask for the strength and wisdom to live as Christ lived and wants us to live, and we can love through the power of the Holy Spirit and be his Body here on earth, with his Spirit who gives us life.