Shall I answer: "Faith, hope, and love"?
That sounds beautiful.
But I would say - Courage.
No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth.
Our task today is recklessness.
For what we Christians lack is not psychology or literature,
we lack holy rage.
The recklessness that comes from the knowledge of God and humanity.
The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets...
and when the lie rages across the face of the earth -
a holy anger about things that are wrong in the world.
To rage against the ravaging of God's earth,
and the destruction of God's world.
To Rage when little children must die of hunger,
when the tables of the rich are sagging with food.
To rage at the senseless killing of so many,
and against the madness of militaries.
To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction - Peace.
To rage against complacency.
To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change
human history until it conforms with the norms of the Kingdom of God.
And remember the signs of the Christian church have always been -
the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish...
but never the chameleon.
Danish pastor Kaj Munk
There is much of me that echoes with this. There is a lot of frustration as I deal with myself personally in ways I have become more like this kingdom and bought into our affluent culture's terms of success and how things ought to be. Bigger is not always better. Wealth is not always positive. More doesn't make things easier. The list could go on.
I am continually challenged to live the way Jesus did in opposition to the culture of his day. He upset the paradigms of social construction and called the outcasts to himself while rejecting the religious and pious. I continually struggle with my own sense of how to live and how the people of the church must live. Jesus showed us a better way. It was a way that was completely against our own sensibilities, but it was a way that drew the outsider. He did not cast stones at what was wrong with the world, but chose to demonstrate to the world and those in it a way that was different than that kingdom...the way of the Kingdom.
I would suggest we call into question...pray about...seek Scripture's guidance...on each way we've chameleoned to our culture. So how do you think about money? The environment? How you spend your time? What about relationships? Your job? Media? Etc? Instead of thoughtlessly absorbing these things I think Jesus gives us some direction of how to be life giving in a way that doesn't cast stones at those who are absorbed in the culture, but in a way that shows them a different path...the one less traveled.
In closing I must admit this journey is not even close to easy. In some ways I'm scared. What exactly will have to change in me, my life, how I think, and how I do things? In what ways do I have to give up control in order to live a life of faith? There is a radical nature to all of this and it's not very palatable. However, I believe as it's embraced the life of God enters into us restoring us in such a way that our holiness (being set apart) is a light to all.
Wasn't that the hope for Israel and the church anyway?
