A Personal Rant on “Victorious Living”
Okay, I’ll admit to being a little bit frustrated as of late by the seemingly increasing references to the happy, healthy, “victorious” life that is supposedly due to those of us who choose to follow Christ. Never mind the fact that it just doesn’t add up Biblically speaking. (Check out John 9 and the man who was born blind and healed “so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.”) It doesn’t jive with reality. Ask anyone whose child was killed by a drunk driver. Ask anyone whose loved one died of cancer (or any number of awful diseases they did nothing to deserve). Ask anyone who lost it all a year ago when Katrina hit. Ask anyone. Life does not verify - even contradicts! - the theology.
Simply saying the name Jesus (or even saying it the right way) does not mean that we win the grand prize of all Christianity - the Holy Bubble Suit complete with Teflon coating. So-called leaders of the church are doing us a disservice by hiding behind plastic smiles and picture-perfect family perceptions. If you claim to have no struggles or pain in your life, you are a liar. If you are a Christian and you make the same claim - or worse yet, give Jesus the “credit” for such a claim - you are misrepresenting the Gospel.
Why is it so hard for us to admit that we really are sinners and we really live in a rotten world? The Good News - the Gospel - is not that God raises us above all of this yuck. The Gospel is that He Himself walks with us through it, changing us along the way to be more like Him. And, at least for me personally, when I think about my life in those terms - on His terms - all that other stuff that is supposed to make me “prosperous” just doesn’t matter. I want more of Him, not more of anything else, and I trust Him to know what will transform me into His image.
I ask you neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory….You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health, or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom.
Ahhhh, thank you, Blaise Pascal, for voicing so eloquently what I want to scream from the rooftops today. Now that is victorious living.
Thanks for helping to keep the thought spinning in my head!
