In my sermon on the Spiritual Discipline of Showing Up, I said, “If you are going to be sticking your neck out and taking on Jesus’ yoke, for his sake, don’t fake it. Bring your real self to God.”
For the next couple of days, I want us to consider what it means to bring our “real selves” to God by offering some excerpts from my book Show Time: Living Down Hypocrisy by Living Out the Faith. You see, I found when I was researching and writing the book that the biggest concern of both Christians and non-Christians when it comes to our faith is the amount of hypocrisy that is evident in Christianity. So how do we “make it real” and “live it out”? What does it mean to “Show up ‘really’” for Christ?
2 Peter 1:3-10 lays out for us a path of steps for Christians to cultivate the kind of character that is respected even by unbelievers, to live a life that is commendable by any reasonable standard.
And faith that produces a life commendable to unbelievers includes—no, requires—a religious life. Faith alone is not enough, individual character is not enough. Faith that works, produces religion that works. And religion that works reflects well the very character of God to a searching world.
The word “godliness” in 2 Peter 1:3-10 is also translated in other verses like 1 Timothy 3:6 as “religion.” It refers to the personal and corporate commitments that we make as a sign of our devotion to God. Godliness is both our piety and practice, both our inner spiritual life and our corporate worship life.
In this text, we learn that our faith—if we truly want it to be respected by those in the world—must not only produce character, but also consistent acts of devotion. Now this may seem strange to us. Why would anyone in the world, care about my church life? Why would secular people give a hoot about the way I practice my religion?
Reconsidering Religion
Since the word religion comes from the Latin word that means “to bind, or to commit” we could say that godliness means demonstrating our inner devotion to God in acts of binding commitment. It is our worship life, our church life, our ethical life. It is our faith at work in church.
What is interesting here is to remember is that this is a list of what we would call “secular” virtues from Greek culture. What the popular culture of the day found commendable. And one of the character qualities that was considered most commendable was sincere, devout godliness or religion. And I believe that this is still the case today.
In Gallup’s annual poll of the most respected people in the world, Billy Graham has been named more than any other person in the last 50 years. Pope John Paul the II is always mentioned, and until her death, the reigning most admired woman in the world was Mother Theresa. Even in such potentially anti-religious institutions as professional sports, Hakeem Olajauwon, a devout Moslem was called by Sports Illustrated as the “most widely respected player amongst his peers” in part because of his well-known devotion to his religion even undertaking the month-long fast of Ramadan during the basketball season.
In other words, even non-religious people respect and admire those who are devout, sincere and dedicated to their religions. And this is exactly what this passage refers to. It is telling us that if faith works, then it must not only produce personal character, but that character must be expressed in committed devotion and consistent practice of our faith. The world wants to see if we can “walk our talk.” Unbelievers want to see if it is possible to live bound to other believers in shared commitment. And I believe this is exactly why very often the single biggest stumbling block to unbelievers seeking God, is not Jesus but Christians; not faith but church.
In his book titled Exit Interviews, William Hendricks revealed the results of interviews with people who have left Christian churches. Now, their reasons for leaving were varied, but a common theme was evident. When people leave the church, they are not trying to leave God. When people leave the church, they are usually deeply disappointed in the people of the church. They came looking for genuine community of people committed to their convictions and they left saying that the church was little different than any other group in the world.
Even people who are exploring the faith are looking to see if what we believe really makes a difference in the way practice our faith. Is our faith demonstrated in godliness, do our beliefs produce genuine religion. Or is this really all just some kind of perfunctory social game? The people interviewed told story after story of the disappointment between what people said they believed and how they acted—even at church.
So here is the next step on following Jesus into the real world of Monday to Friday: pause and consider how well you are doing on Sundays. A genuine and vibrant faith results in an authentic and real church. And “godliness” is both. So, how do we produce this godliness?
Tune in tomorrow…. (In the spirit of my conviction that spiritual disciplines are best practiced communally, I included a series of questions for a group discussion at the end of each chapter of Show Time. A number of small groups are using this short biblical exposition of one passage for their small groups. A good price for buying the book in bunches is found here.)
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