Jesus – more than
a ticket to heaven

I once knew a girl who told me that Jesus only saves us after we die. As strange as that belief may sound, if we’re really honest with ourselves, you’ll find that most of us act as if we believe that – as if Jesus died and now we have a ticket to heaven, which is better because it’s the non-hell option. That’s the extent of Christianity to many of us and that’s the reason we buy into the Gospel. So, Jesus becomes our bailout buddy when we croak – more of a hotshot lawyer and not much of a father or a friend. The sad thing is this picture pretty much characterizes the teaching in today’s pop Christianity.

Not so fast, you might say, today’s church certainly espouses values, societal standards and principles. And you would be right in saying this, but when fully examined, the propaganda coming from the popular church has less to do with Christ and more to do with sustaining comfort.

I’ll explain.

At the root of our ideas as an American church, we espouse what has been branded, “family values.” These “family values” are mainly about being pro-life, not having sex before marriage, being anti-homosexuality, attacking the non-traditional and non-conformists, and attacking the moneymakers in popular culture that are blamed for the breakdown of family togetherness. This has to do with comfort on two levels: We hate change (and love the past), and we love America.

Some of our moral values are true and biblically based, but they have more to do with being comfortable in this life and less to do with loving Christ. Thus, Christ bails us out of hell for the next life, and we have found in his teaching comfortable morality that we don’t want to see eroded in this society.

I realize that I’ve just attacked the basis of the entire conservative worldview. It’s not the worldview that I’m attacking as much as I’m attacking the route we take to get to this worldview.

The basis of the casual Christian is this: Christ redeemed me from sin. I am a Christian because Christ redeemed me from sin, and that helps me live life. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this belief, but if we leave it at that, we have ignored the other part of the Gospel.

As much as we are redeemed from sin, we are redeemed into new life. Not just new life in the next age, but new life in this age. The city-on-a-hill-type of new life. The life of a Christ follower, who has died so that he or she might find life – the person who follows the whole Gospel recognizing Jesus as more than just a savior but a master and lord, and lives pursuing Christ in a relationship and in community. So, we follow Christ in a relationship, not just a set of rules the church espouses.

The problem becomes this: We confuse the American dream with the Christian life. They are not interchangeable. The truth is this: We weren’t put on this earth to sustain freedom and comfort in our own lives, and dying to the world isn’t equal to living for America.

I can imagine being at a traditional-marriage rally and meeting Jesus. It might go like this:

Jesus: Hello, Kyle. What are you doing here?
Kyle: I’m here supporting marriage in America.
Jesus: Why are you doing that?
Kyle: Because we need biblical values and faith in America.
Jesus: And you plan to achieve this through politics and these rallies?
Kyle: Yes, of course.
Jesus: Well why are you doing that? I never told you to convict the world of sin – that’s what my Spirit does. I simply commanded you to love me, love others and preach my good news.

We mistakenly ignore the full Gospel and fall in love with America. We forget that Christ has so much more open to us than just a ticket to heaven. And we become confused, valuing our comfort of a Christian bubble over dying to self and truly preaching the Good News. Instead, we preach commandments to a lost world, trying to convict and police their actions – this is much easier. In doing this, we forget that the actions of man are from the outpouring of his heart. Flattery and humanly imposed guilt only result in behavior modification. Through political tactics and campaigns we might modify the behavior of Americans, which could result in our own comfort, but it is eternally worthless.

More than just that, we have forgotten to love. Our traditional values might be nice to look at, but our tactics are no more loving than those of anyone else involved in politics. During the past few years, we Christians have marred the popular image of Christ to a community of homosexuals because we have not loved. Does anyone else find that sickening? We can hold to sound doctrine while still pouring out love.

There is nothing wrong with values – they are true and right and needed. Yet, the route we take to arriving at these values becomes our mistake. The heart must first be changed. The heart will not change through political campaigns. Societal revolution then takes place when the heart goes through a revolution.