Brett Tilford

I wish I was better at thinking about “us” and not just myself. The phrase “common good” conjures up so many negative thoughts and emotions for me. Most of them having to do with communism and socialism. I instantly begin thinking about the book Animal Farm and how that phrase was twisted and used for the exact opposite of what it was intended to mean.

The challenge of course is that it’s a biblical concept. Paul speaks about it as does St. Augustine and of course the early church lived this way.  Maybe my repulsion to the phrase is more a product of my middle class American culture than Jesus’ actual opinion of the subject or church history.

One of the principles I learned from a professor was, “Be wary of an ‘interpretation’ of Jesus words that ends up completely ignoring them.” Yet, I find myself doing this all the time.

For example Luke 6:30 says, “…If anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” If I were preaching on this verse I would be super tempted to say, “Now don’t worry. Jesus isn’t saying that if someone steals something from you, you shouldn’t demand it back. What he’s saying is that we need to live generously.”

Really? Is that what he’s saying Tilford, because it sounded an awful lot to me like your trying to explain away a very straight forward interpretation of that verse with the assumption, “Well, dear Lord he can’t possibly mean that!”

The genius thing I do (among others) is withdraw a principle from the verse that ends up removing the prickly parts. Like the phrase I said above, “…what he’s saying is that we need to live generously.” Brilliant! This is especially helpful if I’m reading, preaching, or discipling someone through difficult verses of the Bible. All I have to do is read the verse aloud and then distill it into an easy to swallow principle that goes down like butter! Not only do I feel better about my faith but the folks I’m talking to are put at ease. Don’t worry friends. Following Jesus is easy!

I’m an idiot alot of the time.

Of course I’m not saying that all these “challenging” verses have straightforward interpretations that we’re blatanly ignoring. I think we need serious conversation and prayer about the difficult sayings of Jesus. However, I despise when we avoid those difficult conversations by quickly muzzling Jesus with a slick interpretation that assumes the easy route.

I think the world is waiting for a church that is better at being obedient than slick.

There’s an interesting idea that I find myself daydreaming about off an on.  It’s the idea that none of us are Christians, instead we are all becoming Christians.  At first glance this may seem like nothing more than a slippery semantic twist.  ”Oh I get it” you say to me with a knowing wink, “we say we’re not Christians but we really are. We just say we’re not, so people will think we’re humble.”  To that I would reply, “Nope. It’s not really humility as much as an acknowledgement of the reality that as human beings we’re an awfully mixed bag.”

There’s a big theological word called “sanctification” that basically says we are works in progress.  We are literally becoming saved.  Doesn’t Paul say something about working out our salvation with fear and trembling?  I think somewhere in our evangelical scramble to assure everyone that they’re really saved and going to heaven we lost this idea that it’s a process.  We’re on a journey.  We’re literally becoming Christians.

Next time someone asks if you’re a Christian I think an interesting answer would be “Nope, but I hope to be someday.”  Not to be tricky or evasive but to be more honest about the reality of our religious lives.

As I mentioned a few days back I attend a small church that is quite lame but we love it.  One of the questions we’re wrestling with is how we grow numerically?  Right now we’re pretty limited by the space (we meet in a friend’s tiny living room) and by the number of quality small group leaders we can prod (bribe) into leading.  Right now we grow to about 30 people and then drop down to 15, then grow to 30 and drop down again, and again, and again, etc.

The way I see it we have two options.  1. We find a bigger space to meet.  2. We split into two groups.  I think we’ll probably end up going with option #1 for now but #2 is probably inevitable.  That makes me sad.  Growth is great but it also sucks.