Posts Tagged: easy believe-ism

“A Long Slow Series of Clicks”

On October 11, 2023 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Follow me!” (Jesus)

“I believe in you, Jesus.” (Me)

“Good! Now follow me!” (Jesus)

A friend of mine has gotten super-serious about recovering from addiction. He used to feel that he was “terminally unique.” God loved everyone else in the universe, except for him. He felt like a mistake.

And then, my friend wrote something in his email report that I will never forget, something that will haunt and prod and help me to my dying day. “Thankfully by some grace of some power bigger than myself that I don’t understand, something clicked eventually, and it’s been a long slow series of clicks since then.”

Something clicked. Yes! But there are also those long, slow subsequent clicks. Recovery from addiction, learning Spanish (or anything else), the quest for wisdom, dieting—any good thing you can name—involve something clicking. But more importantly, all good things involve a number of slow clicks.

I once read something to the effect that, for too many people, “the Christian faith is often a sudden spasm followed by a long lethargy.” (Or was it “. . . followed by a long paralysis”?) That is not really the Christian faith, but a pale imitation of it. It is sometimes called “easy believe-ism”, but I prefer to call it just plain false.

Jesus did not speak simply of believing in him. He also spoke of following him. It was one of the main ways in which Jesus spoke of the life to which he was calling his disciples, then and now. With only one exception, Jesus’ call to be his disciple/s is in the present tense in Greek. The present tense connotes ongoing, repetitive, life-style actions. A good question for disciples of Christ to ask every day and many times during the day is this: Am I following Jesus right now?

May we all keep clicking along in our followership today!

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