Berean Journeymen

Over the past few months I have been engaged in separate dialogues with a self-proclaiming atheist and a self-proclaiming agnostic. As I contemplate their views and their lives relative to many self-proclaiming ‘Christians’, it is not their differences that are striking, but their similarities.

How can someone who is uncommitted to any particular god and someone who claims Jesus is God…both accept the value of living according to the Bible yet choose not to do so fully? Maybe neither is willing to accept its entirety, preferring to pick and choose what they feel suits them.

How can someone who claims there is no god at all and someone who claims Jesus is God…both talk to each other with unveiled hatred and poison dripping from their tongues? Maybe neither really knows what true brotherly love is.

How can someone who is uncommitted to any particular god and someone who claims Jesus is God…both be disappointed by their sin yet do little to address it? Maybe neither connects with how deeply their Creator abhors their sin nor are they willing to pursue true repentance with perseverance.

How can someone who claims there is no god at all and someone who claims Jesus is God…both live lives of complacency and stagnation? Maybe neither actually believes they need to become a new creation and live a life of righteousness.

How can someone who is uncommitted to any particular god and someone who claims Jesus is God …both have so little passion for God? Maybe neither sees God for whom he truly is nor believes deep down that He is worthy of their full obedience and whole-hearted worship…let alone their very lives.

How can someone who claims there is no god at all and someone who claims Jesus is God…both say they have faith and hope (in themselves or their God respectively) yet lack any sustainable evidence of either? Maybe neither feels true faith overflows into works. Maybe neither feels an explanation for the hope, or lack thereof, within them needs to come from the heart, so they settle for the tongue.

How can someone who is uncommitted to any particular god and someone who claims Jesus is God…both think that the crucifixion was about someone experiencing a painful death upon a cross? Maybe neither ponders the weight of humanity’s guilt nor the emptiness of divine forsakenness. Maybe neither sees the true message of a Father’s love and compassion. Maybe neither wants to hear its command for self-sacrifice nor its call to embrace the indebted words ‘not my will, but yours be done’.

How can someone who claims there is no god at all and someone who claims Jesus is God…both comfortably or uncomfortably accept immorality in their lives? Maybe neither thinks they will go to hell.

How can someone who is uncommitted to any particular god and someone who claims Jesus is God…both hear the power of the gospel and respond with words but not their lives? Maybe neither thinks that one day they may call out “Lord, Lord” and hear Jesus reply “I do not know you.”

So I am left pondering, how many of us self-proclaiming Christians are walking blindly along thinking we’re sheep but the true reflection of our lives reveals we are nothing more than goats? If we truly were sheep, would we not be following our master’s voice? How many of us Americans and ‘Bereanites’ honor God with our lips, but have hearts that are far from him? How many of us Americans and ‘Bereanites’ have bought into Satan’s ultimate deceit, thinking simply because we called on the name of the Lord once we are saved while ignoring the greater commands to call on him daily and to repent and to believe and to serve and to be transformed…rendering ourselves not only useless but unknowingly lost? The rapidly declining direction of a country with such a high percentage of self-proclaiming ‘born-again Christians’ does not whisper, but screams there are more being deceived than we may think. Are we willing to take a hard, honest look at our own reflection…and cry out to God for eyes to see and a willing spirit to change…regardless of what we find peering back at us?