“For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.” James 1:11 The American Dream. Throughout my seventeen years of growing up in the number one suburb in America this term has become an increasingly heartbreaking term to me. I have watched my family, my friends, and myself get caught up in comforts, materialism, and self-advancement and thus completely deceived by Satan to be useless to God and led blindly down a hell bound race. We are so caught up in getting to the next step in life that we seem to miss it all. When Mr. Caldwell suggested I read this book I honestly thought: “oh I already have such a passion for this I don’t need anymore fuel.” But as a have begun to read this book I have realized just how much I still have to learn and so excited to finish this book and live a life in more complete abandonment to Christ.
Abandonment: “I could not help but think that somewhere along the way we had missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it with what is comfortable. We were settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.” Jesus makes it clear in the Bible that to follow him means the complete abandonment of everything- our needs, our desires/dreams, and our families. When we choose to believe in Jesus we are then faced with the next question- will we obey Jesus? Will we be too lazy, timid, complacent or whatever else it is that might prevent us from following Jesus or will we simply listen and submissively and faithfully obey the words of Jesus: “follow me?” When we start to really think about Jesus’ radical words they sound very crazy and would have taken a lot of faith to follow. I say ‘would have’ considering when He first said them, but when we actually begin to meditate on his word’s meanings I think that we as Christians will find it actually very hard to follow also. We have numbed everything down and made excuses to things Jesus told people to do, (‘what he really meant here was...”) and thus live lives of disobedience. We are starting to redefine Christianity and are giving into the dangerous temptation of taking the Jesus of the Bible and twisting him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with. We are trying to mold Jesus into our image and thus when we worship we may be instead worshipping ourselves. How did we get to this place where it is actually tolerable to spend so much time and money on comforts for ourselves when so many are dying destined to a Christless eternity. When we actually begin to live out the words of Christ for an eternal treasure the world will think we are crazy. But we know that we are actually not giving up anything but gaining in the end. Because we have found something worth losing it all for- we abandon it all with joy!!! I want to be proof that people who are naturally drawn to the comforts of the American dream can be converted to a radical faith in a radical Savior.
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