faith

What is the real world application of your faith?

If you are a Christian, how does that fundamentally effect your life?

Do you go to church?

Pray?

Listen to worship music?

Go to Bible study?

If so... what function do these practices serve?

Do they make you feel better?

Do you feel like God would be mad if you didn't?

Are those places where your friends are?

Do you just not know what else to do?

I love the church. I love campus ministry and Christian community. However, I am worried that our practices lack any real meaning anymore. If faith is now a consumer product, something that we do so that we can feel better, or be seen, then I am not sure what the point really is. This world is crawling with Christians. WSU has at least 10 Christian groups. But what purpose are we really serving? What purpose are all of the churches that litter the Palouse and the US in general really fulfilling?

What is the measure of any Christian community? Is it members? Conversions? Bible studies? These things are great and they are not. They are great if they are helping people live fully Christ-integrated lives. Meaning lives that are rich, abundant, risky and revolutionary. They are not if they allow people to live in a fantasy world that is all of the aforementioned things, but then return to the real world without so much as a second thought or re-examination.

Perhaps all of the Christian structures were created to remind us that Jesus called us to be nothing less than a revolutionary presence in the world. But they all run the risk of being the places where we learn to pat ourselves on the backs and congratulate ourselves for our faithfulness.

Church, worship, Bible study...these can be the places in our lives where we allow God to deeply, deeply unsettle us. These can be the places where we lose our lives and find purpose. These can be the places where we become truly known by the one who truly knows us.

We need to settle for nothing less.