Christianity 101

Over this past weekend, Terry Fouché said to Highway Church, “Faithfulness to live out the calling of God just takes plodding.One step in front of the other, day by day.”

His words echoed a sentiment shared by Chris Wienand at the Southern African Collective in April of this year. When asked about the days, weeks, and even years of waiting to hear from God but without the freshness or the Spirit-filled ease that sometimes accompanies our actions, Chris said, “I’ve always believed in doing the basics well.”

Timothy Keller spoke about a problem with modern Christianity being that we want techniques of faith rather than just obeying God. We would like to reach the end product of holiness by learning tricks and shortcuts to live and behave in ways that were designed to be reached through a lifetime of relationship with God and obedience to God. In fact, we would often rathertake the shortcuts to “results” than invest in a real relationship, which is in fact the only way that truly brings about the “results” we’re seeking, as well as doing so in the way that God intended it would be done.

Perhaps more popularly, Eugene H. Peterson borrowed a phrase from Friedrich Nietzsche (of all people!), titling his book on discipleship “A Long Obedience In The Same Direction”. Peterson emphasised our modern culture’s “tourist mindset” and instead campaigns for “the patient acquisition of virtue”.

In Luke 9:23, Jesus tells His listeners that the path of the disciple is one of daily self-denial and cross-bearing. When He taught His disciples how to pray, He gave them those now-famous words: give us today our daily bread. Later in that same sermon in Matthew 6, He cautioned His followers against worrying about events as distant as tomorrow, for each day has enough trouble of its own.

In their own ways, Terry Fouché, Chris Wienand, Eugene Peterson, and Tim Keller are each bringing the truth of Jesus’ words into our modern context. Though it is repackaged in different wording, all four men are drawing on the lived reality of what Jesus said two thousand years ago. The faith we hold, live, and proclaim is one that is experienced and exemplified by extended periods of steadfastness supported by moments of revelation. As the church, God’s “called-out ones”, we need to be careful not to buy into (as a friend of mine referred to it) “Christian hustle culture”, which sells us ideas along these lines: there must always be new revelation; there must always be “the next thing”; God must always be telling you something new; you have to find the new thing that God is doing every single day.

As a firm believer in the lack of newness under the sun, it is impossible to imagine that “Christian hustle culture” has just now come around for the first time. The desire to supplement the core virtues, experiences, truths, and activities of Christianity has been prevalent since the inception of the church (and before, but we’ll focus on New Testament examples for now). Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, saying,

“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.  I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” (Galatians 3:1-3).

This is widely believed to have been written in the late 40s. Not the 1940s, just the 40s. As early as a few decades into the existence of the church, believers were looking for other additions to the instruction they had received regarding the foundational truths of Christ’s death and resurrection, justification through faith, and the believer’s baptism. So early into the church’s development, these gathering groups of Christians were being given new ways to get close to God.

Now, almost two thousand years later, the gathering groups of Christians continue to hear of new ways to get close to God. Why? For the same reason advertisements work: we want what is being sold. Why are there continually new ways to improve your “faith journey”? Because we are still seeking new ways to get close to God. We still want to add to the foundational teachings of the gathering of the saints, justification through faith alone, and the believer’s baptism (among all other foundational doctrines of the church).

Why does this continue to appeal to us, you ask? There are two main reasons why people want to add to their foundational beliefs and disciplines: acceleration (I want to get to my destination faster) and augmentation (there must be something more I’m not doing). Some of us (consciously or unconsciously) view holiness as a goal that can be reached, and therefore ought to be reached as fast as possible, so we hope to accelerate our holiness by doing more, whether publicly (in church, in Life Group, etc) or privately (in our quiet times, just between us and God); this outlook fixates on an apparently quantifiable reality that Christians are working towards and wants it now. Others look at the state of our lives, having been walking with God faithfully, and find an evident misalignment between the way things “should be” and how they actually are; the contrast between what is and what we think ought to be is enough to plant a seed of doubt that leads to augmenting the foundational practices and beliefs with something more.

Whether it relates to the completeness of Christ’s work on the cross or the simple, repeated disciplines that have sustained saints for generations, the church continues to doubt that the faith we are called to could really be that straightforward.

Perhaps you were expecting something different upon reading this post’s title of “Christianity 101”—a tutorial or basics course, possibly. Instead, you got a discourse on the discontent of believers, new and old. Bear with me.

When you come to faith in Christ, it’s like starting out a university degree. Where do you start? Naturally, you start with the basics, the 101 courses. Before you get to your 215s and 334s, you go comprehensively through your 101s.

For the sake of clarity, what are these 101 courses? What is being covered as a baseline before you continue with more complicated, more in-depth material? As far as the foundational activities, one could confidently list prayer, the teaching of God’s Word, the remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice, and the gathering of the saints (Acts 2:42). This translates to spending time with God in private as well as in the company of fellow believers; both personal devotional time and congregational gathering are core, fundamental activities in the faith we are living out.

And as far as foundational beliefs of the church, Paul goes into meticulous depth on the doctrines of Christ’s death, resurrection, and return, and their relevance to our life today in the book of Romans, from chapters 1-11. Many of the doctrines expounded in these chapters have come to form creeds and church belief statements over the past centuries, including our own, which can be found on this website. These include doctrinal beliefs as well as the actions that stem from these beliefs, such as obedience to the greatest commandment (Matthew 22) and the great commission (Matthew 28), both of which are echoed through the letters to the early church.

These are the basics. These are the foundational teachings and activities of the church. This is Christianity 101.

But what happens when Christianity 101 comes face to face with our desire to accelerate or augment, to have more, or to have it faster?

Well, though there are a variety of options to choose from if you want to become holy faster or add new practices to living out your faith, the sum total of them will lead you in one of two directions: go wild or get weird.

Accelerating your faith by quantifying achievable goals and maximising efficiency in your life to reach those goals can and will exhaust you. Treating faith as a game to be played rather than a relationship to be built is both dangerous and unrealistic, leading ultimately to a lot of wasted effort. You can go as wild as you like: God is still walking at His pace with you.

Adding to your faith new and fresh ways to express your beliefs or homing in on aspects of God different to those you often hear preached or read about is not a bad practice in and of itself. Our God is infinite; there is infinite of Him to be studied, delved into, and enjoyed. However, there should be cautioning against the repetitive and excessive quest for the new practices, the undiscovered truths. There is a foundation set in the Bible of God’s character, His redemption of humanity, and the actions He calls us to as a result of our salvation. There are two thousand years of church history of theologians and God-fearing authors and preachers who have built on this foundation by careful, prayer-filled study and faith-driven desire. There are communities around us who aim to help Christians live out their faith in day-to-day business. These are God-given tools to help us, refresh us, and build us into the people God calls us to be. There is no need to stray from the tried and true methods of prayer, Biblical study, and community and into the unknown, the new truth, or the daily fresh revelations of so-called seekers, mystics, and social media gurus. In growing tired or complacent with the familiar, please see that there is no need to tend towards the weird.

Because the truth is that there is no Christianity 102. There is no Christianity 215 or 334. There is no Bible 2 waiting to drop at the right time; there is no Prayer+ or Community Pro coming out this spring.

There is no Christianity 102.

What we are left with, then, is the same set of practices and disciplines that fed and nurtured two thousand years of believers and continues to feed and nurture believers today. The quest for a way to become holy faster or more comprehensively than the way that was detailed to Jesus’ disciples and expanded upon in the letters to the early church will only result in spiritual burnout or abandoning good practices in pursuit of something that has appeal on the surface, but nothing beneath.

So, in the times of spiritual fatigue or frustration at the state of our lives, let us not go looking for diverse ways of dealing with the immediate problem. Remain steadfast; hold onto faithfulness to God’s timing and trust in the process He is carrying out in you. He is working all things together in His timing and to His ends. Do not strive, friends. Do not rush. Do not rage. Let yourself be led by our Good Shepherd. Be taught by the Good Teacher.

In the words of John Henry Sammis, the nineteenth century hymnist:

Trust and obey, for there’s no other way
to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

There is no life beyond trusting and obeying. There is no technique other than faith in who God is and faithfulness to what He has called you to do.

Maybe Christianity 102 begins in heaven. Let us arrive knowing we spent every day of our lives working to ace Christianity 101.