Getting Real

[HKHaugan]

“Hold her steady…Steady...Steady as she goes.” That is the call to the helmsman from the captain as a boat is navigated through a storm, a narrow channel or just plain keeping the boat on course. That is also our spiritual call to keep Jesus as our focus.

I just saw in a news report that Ann Rice has left Christianity but not Jesus and that a well-known basketball player has gone to Israel in search of spirituality. Why are people who have a strong faith in Jesus leaving denominational churches or, as the term goes, ‘organized religion?’

I’ve just finished a very challenging book, Mere Churchianity, by Michael Spencer who, by the way, just died this last April. It is the study book (Spencer’s only book) for our weekly very diverse Mountain Men group led by a Baptist minister that meets in Newland, NC. It is an ‘in-your-face’ book confronting our individual spirituality, where we really live in our minds and hearts. He pulls no punches as he digs into man-centered evangelicalism. He basically bulldozes his way into what he believes is a false evangelicalism, a sea of dishonest smiley faces hiding their lonely brokenness behind a dogmatic institutional front that people have placed between themselves and the secular world.

It is not a genuine heart evangelical experience of Jesus he attacks but what he perceives as a pseudo-evangelical mindset you have to accept if you want to have a true relationship with the real Jesus. Spencer contends it is that mindset which closes the door to helping others experience Jesus personally and spiritually. He sees this false concept of evangelical experience as a list of political and social ‘musts’ to predetermine whether you qualify as a Christian. In essence, a new legalism that claims, “If you are a Christian this is how you believe, think, worship, act and believe.” It has ceased being personally spiritual which is the ‘why’ people leave the institutional church even though they have a strong faith in Jesus. Spencer sees it as a denominational, doctrinal, social, political Spirit-blocking package.

What he wants us to do is to be honest inside our hearts and minds. Is what I say and do because Jesus led me there? Spencer encourages us to personally ask God for a Jesus-shaped spirituality and he tells us where to find it,---in Scripture. Simply open the Gospels and allow the Holy Spirit to lead you into Jesus as He reveals Himself personally there. Seek Him with others who want to know Him in the same way. See Scripture without the interference of canned phrases, political rhetoric and doctrinal judgmentalism. Then let the Spirit shape a Jesus-spirituality in you that responds to the world honestly in the Spirit. This in turn offers others a genuine door through which they can walk to meet Jesus as Savior and Lord. All I can say is read the book. I’d love to get your response. ><>Whitey