By HUNTER GREENE
I started my senior year at Milligan this past week, and truthfully, it has been bittersweet. I am anxious for the next chapter of my life, but I am no doubt going to miss this place and these people. One place in particular is the classroom. For some, God speaks to them in very direct and vivid ways. Others feel God in a way that is very charismatic and emotional. For me, I often feel God most in an academic setting where I have time to reflect and contemplate on the nature and complexity of our God and who He has manifested Himself to be in Jesus Christ. There aren’t many “amens’” and not much singing, but in many ways, it is still church for me.
Already in this short week, God and I have had church. I was sitting in my Ethics class, and I heard one of the simplest, yet profound questions I have ever encountered. My professor said, “I live my life trying to answer a couple of big questions. For example, I wake up every morning and ask, ‘What does it look like to live faithfully to the cause and kingdom of Christ today?’ This is a question that I spend every day of my life trying to answer with my words and my actions.”
This may not do anything for you, but I was sobered. I was looking at a man who has taught for thirty years, has had a full life, and this is the one question that he wakes up to. It wasn’t when he was going to die or what he was going to have for breakfast. He wanted to know how to best live faithfully to Christ in a culture and world that does not recognize Him as Lord. To me, this is what it means to be a focused Christian, a motivated Christian, and a passionate Christian.
My question to you is this: what question are you trying to answer with your life? Maybe a better way to look at it is: what god is your life claiming to serve?
God tells the children of Israel in Exodus that He was to be their only deity and that there should be no other gods before Him. As we look in the Old Testament, we find that golden calves and graven images were God’s competition. Today, we say, “Thank God,” because none of us would ever have something as profane as a golden calf that we worship. I think that we operate under the assumption that idolatry is not something that we tend to struggle with any more. However, if we would be honest with ourselves, we would find that we have idols and gods all over our lives.
I have found that people like to make a version of God that is comfortable to them. It may not look like a golden calf, but in many ways, we fabricate a version of God that is consistent with our politics, our sports, and our traditions. When this happens, we diminish God to a better version of ourselves. In other words, we make Him a “god.”
People have a Republican god, a Democrat god, a Capitalist god, and a Socialist god. People create a denominational god, football god, band god, and a military god. You see, none of these gods are truly God. They may sound like God at times and look like God at times, but we can never confine God to the boxes of our traditions and opinions.
Rather, we must find the God who has manifested Himself in Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 3:16 reads, “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” God became flesh in Jesus Christ. When we try to make God look like anything other than Christ, we create idols.
So how do we live lives that are faithful to God and His kingdom? We do so by living our lives just as Christ Jesus lived His. We love people liberally. We sin conservatively, if at all. And we constantly find ourselves about our Father’s business.