Reading for
me as a kid only became bearable in school when I discovered the “Choose Your
Own Adventure” books. It wasn’t the
great stories that caught my attention, rather it was the gold star I got for
reading a whole book even if my demise came after only a couple of pages. I
chose the simple most comfortable path for me.
Many of us
can approach the Christian life like this in two devastating ways. First, we can choose our adventure so that
our lives are “easy.” Even for those of us who would rightly dismiss “your best
life now” kind of Gospel may still want a life without suffering or
difficulty. We want to know Christ like
Paul expresses in Philippians 3:9-10a, but would like to avoid 10b where Paul
says that he desires to share in Christ’s “sufferings, becoming like him in his
death.” In our flesh this cannot compute,
we want predictable lives because predictability creates a sense of security
and security breeds comfort and comfort gives us the illusion of control, which
confirms a flesh-based ambition to be god-like.
We want the hope
and comfort Christ offers us but ignore other aspects of living in Christ in
this world to the side.
In other
words, Christ can be turned into an idol. Through our insecurities, we choose
our own adventure we reshape the goodness of Christ lifted-up on the cross and raised
from the grave into an idol that we can manipulate. Yet our “adventure” comes
at a cost, we end up with a “plastic” version of biblical joy, now severed from
Christ. The Christian life is defined by joyously loving Christ and suffering
the consequences of such love as we swim against the current of the world. Plastic
versions prefer not to live as Christ did, “in the far country” (Luke 9:57-62).
The church in the West continually chooses its own adventure to avoid
swimming against the current. The last
60 years are a clear demonstration of giving away truth to go with the flow. We
give up speaking truth in love so that we might be loved by the world. We’d rather participate in darkness rather be
children of light that expose it.
Let’s face
it’s easier and a whole lot less complicated. We won’t have to confront the sins of the
world that are present in our church’s, in our friends’ or relatives’ lives, or
our own. We can live in the comfort of
knowing we haven’t made anyone upset. We
get to have our cake and eat too, acceptance from the world and we have the “joy”
of the cross.
Yet we miss
out on the promise of Christ and reveal we’re not alive to the Christ’s beauty.
The Puritan, Richard Sibbes once warned that, “Christ was never more lovely to
his church than when he was most deformed for his church.” Common sense, or the
sin of the world, is ever present in our churches because we insist on choosing
our own adventure, just check Paul’s description of the church in 2 Tim.
3:1-9. Being alive to Christ means we’re captured by him and desire to join him
in his ways.
This first
approach is reinforced by the second. The church doesn’t know its Bible.
We don’t intimately
know the whole council of God since we don’t read it all on a regular basis. Many
of those who claim Christ as Lord read the story of God as though it were a “Choose
Your Own Adventure” book to get credit of having read it and their ears
tickled. We avoid and ignore parts of the Bible that are “boring” or “irrelevant”
to our lives, say most of the OT. We jump around reading only the bits we like therefore
it have been decades since you’ve even open certain parts of your Bible.
Let me invite you to an incredible adventure. Jump in the Bible and read it like a novel. From beginning to end at a fast pace (say 3 months or less) and discover the character of our Triune God. As God reveals his heart to you, tell him your concerns. Let him know that some of his story is boring to you (it could be heart problem not a God communication problem). Maybe even skim some places to get through the story a bit faster (Leviticus, 1 Chronicles 1-8 or so). But maybe you’ll discover the boring parts offer incredible depth to the bits that you love (say the Leviticus - Hebrews connection). You’ll discover a story and a life that’s far better, far more joyous, than the plastic versions we continue to pick for ourselves. Perhaps we discover we want to live an alternative lifestyle and swim against the current of this world since we have joy in Christ.
Bottom line,
“choosing your own adventure” will guarantee you'll miss the Greatest Adventure
with Jesus.
