Terminal Salvation

In Christian culture, we like saying stuff like “Let’s seek God”. I am not sure what that means. Should we check under the pews, maybe? Perhaps he’s hiding there. I didn’t know that God’s plan included a few rounds of hide-and-seek.

Or how about this – “we are waiting for you, God”. Waiting for what exactly? God showed up 2000 years ago on the cross of Calvary. I think we got our turns confused on the chessboard of life. It’s not us who are waiting on God. It’s God who is waiting on us.

We all want to see miracles from God. I think God is waiting to see some miracles from us. And the biggest miracle, perhaps, would be transforming our church subcultures from keeping us stuck in the mentality of sin-conscious pew warmers and instead treating us as entering into the ever-increasing glory of sons and daughters of the Most High God, walking in his majesty and splendor, and manifesting his love and power all across their cities, regions, countries, and the whole world.

It’s a sad fact that Christians as a whole are the most lethargic army the world has ever seen, if we go with military metaphors. It’s not because there’s something wrong with people. It’s because there’s something very wrong with our training programs. We have atomic power plants inside of us, and yet many of us were taught to sit on their idle nuclear reactors, begging God for just a trickle of power. That may be all religious and pious-sounding, but honestly, that’s quite ignorant.

My Jesus is not the lord of Christmas pageants, ladies’ brunches and church bake sales. He didn’t come just to give us a little chicken soup for our weary souls.

My Jesus shall have the government of this world on his shoulders, and the increase of his government, peace and prosperity shall be without end (Isaiah 9:6-7). And we are his shoulders, we are his hands and feet, we are his mouthpiece, we are the body of Christ.

And instead of being who he called us to be, many of us still can’t decide on the appropriate skirt lengths for women, or how many blood moons it will take before the Rapture Express suddenly comes and whisks us away to eternal glory, while the rest of the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

That’s sickening to the extreme. That makes me want to cry. That’s the spirit of religion.

The way things stand now, the world sees little relevance from the mainstream Churchianity, and so they now ask the Lion of Judah to keep to his little cage in his quaint little religious petting zoo, while they cast off the crutches of religion and go look elsewhere for real answers to real grown-up questions.

But there’s a better way. We just need to take a red pill to see it. And it’s not always easy. Most of the religious world wants the blue pill. And they will not like you for thinking differently.

I know what the blue pill of religion tastes like. I still get that sick feeling in my stomach when I remember its taste. I am still detoxing from its side effects, to be perfectly honest. But I pray that the day comes when I will vomit out the last bit of it.

I don’t know about you, but I am sticking with the red pill.