Being a Disciple
Terry's comment to "Discipleship - Community Style" confronts us with some uncomfortable words from Jesus: "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." Terry then quotes the same passage from The Message: "Simply put, if you're not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can't be my disciple."
Here, in a very succinct statement, which is so typical of Jesus, we are made to understand why he has so few disciples. Few of us are willing to give up everything to be his disciples. Too many "Christians" are like a lot of first century Gentiles, when confronted with accepting Jesus as God, were more than willing to include him with the other gods they were devoted to. But Jesus doesn't give us that prerogative. He will not share devotion with any other, making it plain that no man can serve two masters.
Terry asks, "Shouldn't we first be disciples before we try to export this process?" This is a great question. We can't export something that we do not have. Therefore, it's impossible to export the discipleship concept if we ourselves are not experiencing it. And since disciples are made in small relational communities such as Jesus and the twelve, one of the first things that will need to be given up is our individualism. To insist on maintaining an individualistic lifestyle is to eliminate one's self from the discipleship process that Jesus conducts through community.
We have so accommodated ourselves to a comfortable "Christian" lifestyle that we have refashioned Jesus into our own image. Therefore, he no longer is a threat to us because he is just like us. So we can live our lives free from his disturbing intrusions because we've made for ourselves a safe Jesus that wants us to be happy and blessed. There's only one thing wrong with this. It's idolatry! Being a disciple of Jesus in a legitimate community will expose this and put us in touch with the real Jesus of Scripture, the dynamic resurrected Lord, not the bland icon of our own pitiful creation.
Here, in a very succinct statement, which is so typical of Jesus, we are made to understand why he has so few disciples. Few of us are willing to give up everything to be his disciples. Too many "Christians" are like a lot of first century Gentiles, when confronted with accepting Jesus as God, were more than willing to include him with the other gods they were devoted to. But Jesus doesn't give us that prerogative. He will not share devotion with any other, making it plain that no man can serve two masters.
Terry asks, "Shouldn't we first be disciples before we try to export this process?" This is a great question. We can't export something that we do not have. Therefore, it's impossible to export the discipleship concept if we ourselves are not experiencing it. And since disciples are made in small relational communities such as Jesus and the twelve, one of the first things that will need to be given up is our individualism. To insist on maintaining an individualistic lifestyle is to eliminate one's self from the discipleship process that Jesus conducts through community.
We have so accommodated ourselves to a comfortable "Christian" lifestyle that we have refashioned Jesus into our own image. Therefore, he no longer is a threat to us because he is just like us. So we can live our lives free from his disturbing intrusions because we've made for ourselves a safe Jesus that wants us to be happy and blessed. There's only one thing wrong with this. It's idolatry! Being a disciple of Jesus in a legitimate community will expose this and put us in touch with the real Jesus of Scripture, the dynamic resurrected Lord, not the bland icon of our own pitiful creation.
Shouldn’t we first be disciples before we try to export this process?
True enough – just as watching sport doesn’t translate into any ability to play it, as my severe lack of rugby skills can attest to. That’s not to say we learn absolutely nothing by watching and listening. We do. But the watching and listening has to progress into doing before it begins to translate into ability - which is the Hebrew way - watch, listen, do – watch, listen, do. Teaching often appears between the repetitions. The NT shows Jesus’ disciples following this pattern as they watched and listened to Jesus, observing what he did then learning to do it themselves. Do we await perfection first? I don’t believe so. Perfection hobbles us (is paralyzes us too strong?). Doesn’t perfectionist end up the same place as consumerist? In passivity?
But in community? Absolutely. That’s Davey’s “team” – the ekklesia. Does that preclude times when there might be one on one? Why would it?
Giving up everything is good news when it means divesting ourselves of all the lies we’ve told, all the people we’ve hurt, all the horribles we’ve done … or not done. It’s maybe not so welcome when in Peterson’s words, we have to “kiss goodbye” what’s dearest. But is that not also done bit by bit? … a little here, a little there … or as Peterson phrases it, “an altar here, an altar there” over a lifetime of travel. “Sacrifice is to faith what eating is to nutrition...” (selah). “…Faith, of which Abraham is our father, can never be understood by means of explanation or definition, only in the practice of sacrifice. Only in the act of obedience do we realize that sacrifice is not diminishment … does not result in less joy, less satisfaction, less fulfillment, but in more – but rarely in the ways we expect.” (The Jesus Way)
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Well Said EMC. Just watching isn't acceptable. '(The Jesus way) watch,listen,do)' is the way of discipleship or leaning. My questions are; who am I listening to, who am I watching, what are they doing?, what then am I doing? Does it resemble Jesus? If not maybe I need a new master. I ask myself; am I proclaiming the good news of the gospel like Jesus in Lu 4 and Mat 11 His Kingdom come, healing the sick, casting out demons. I know it looks like rugby or football but it sure sounds like Jesus to me
Giving up everything is such a touchy subject. I wish it weren't so but it seems to be important to Jesus. Yes its a process and happens in bits and pieces. But God looks at our hearts and sees the beginning to the end. Earlier in the same passage and in context of Jesus' words in Lu.14 He gives several parables regarding counting the cost.
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’
Or (paraphrasing Jesus) Do you schedule a dinner banquet not knowing if anyone will show up? How much is everything? I’m not sure but when Jesus says everything I think he means everything?
Did I count the cost? Yes as best as I understood it at the time I made my initial commitment. Do I see over the journey it really costs me "everything"? You bethcha! Do I still have a choice? Yes
But according to Jesus’ words, the prerequisite to being a disciple is giving up everything. So I ask myself, I ask myself (bit by bit) am I willing to give it all up. Am I willing to put all my chips in? I have and it has cost me everything so far and will cost me more on the journey. Does He deserve it? He is worthy of it all.
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If we knew how many poopy nappies there’d be, few of us would have children. By the grace of God we don’t see too far ahead.
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I want to chime in here on a couple of points.
Is discipleship a “concept” to be exported? I prefer to think discipleship is “learning” as Terry expresses but it’s not a concept it is an actual way of moving forward in life within the revelation that Jesus, via the Holy Spirit, brings to us.
Another item that I think is connected and, I fear, will prove more controversial are a) Discipleship MUST occur in community (however defined)
(Another item is the necessity of WHY we must use a “cultural” model frequently referred to in discussion. Jesus used a Hebrew model because he was Jewish. I propose that if he built his story around another culture he would have used a model familiar to them. Why this fixation?)
The community aspect is of concern because I, of necessity, have not had community in the ways I believe most here think of it due to my career. Averaging my time since I’ve been married, I’ve been separated from society for an approximate percentage of time of 58%. The remaining 42% was divided between conventional church & non-attendance to any “group”.
What I’ve found is that by all measures my “discipleship” has, as far as I understand it, increased exponentially (particularly since leaving the established groups). But maybe that’s illusory because I don’t have quantifiable “works” to point to (except I see the ability to LOVE increasing). So my case proves that discipleship is not community dependent. It is Christ dependent.
I believe that community is incredibly valuable but not indispensable. If it were indispensable then I would be a sorry case (though maybe I am and am blind) but the value I see in community is as connected to the call to “forsake all” and to “die daily” but these have become platitudinous and boxed into so many varied and confused messages as to become unworkable as a model for living. What comes to mind would be an ascetic lifestyle or literally (though not excluded) giving away all your possessions.
To Be Continued…
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Continued:
To me the message is simple. The variegated nature of its implementation is complex. The simple message (as it is still forming and changing in my mind) follows on a couple of ideas that have been forming for some time and have recently been given new life and language. These are the complementary ideas expressed by Jeremy Bentham, a then disillusioned 19th century social reformer and Reinhold Niebuhr commenting on this theme: Bentham writes: “… A clue to the interior of the labyrinth has been found. It is the principle of self-preference. Man, from the very constitution of his nature, prefers his own happiness to that of all other sentient beings put together.”
Niebuhr explains how the “will to life” in irrational creation is substantially different that what is found in “rational creation” (man). In man, Niebuhr writes, there is no clear distinction between the “will to live” and the “will to power”. This is the bane of humanity and the reason we need a savior. All systems, codes, religions, disciplines, rational thoughts, or other machinations in the end become tools by which man insinuates his own self-preference into to satisfy the will to power.
This is what I believe Jesus is talking about when he speaks of dying, sacrificing, forsaking all. This is our primary constitution and even though he saves us this brokenness is like a cancer. Jesus holds the cure but it’s a painful and long treatment process as symptom after symptom is attacked, excised, and treated.
So community can expedite this process of living beyond ourselves. But as we’ve seen from the history of the “church” it is not immune from the will to life/will to power pattern and as such is as destructive as any other “man made” paradigm.
Peace,
Mark
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Mark-just an aside comment to an aside question about often using a Hebrew cultural model. The Hebrew culture is unique in that its formation was to be a people who had been "no people," established by God to be redemptive in the earth. "For you are a holy people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth."Deu 14:2
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Ron, As usual you've provided me with perspective. Yet even as we are a called out people as they were does that still mean that the Hebrew cultural model should or shall remain timelessly contemporary? Is there no creative process providing the world with another way of seeing the "peculiar people" of God?
Just sayin'.
Mark
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Mark, - if we are sent to "disciple nations", does this mean we modify their culture, or is it as "American culture" has done and discipled the Church?
What do we think when we read "nations"? Does this mean "ethnic groupings of people", or governmental institutions? Remember that the Hebrew nation was both the people and the government; all were under a theocracy. Viola and Barna and other have shown how within a century the Hebrew priesthood had (erroneously?) been adapted into Christendom along with imperial institutionalism. Added to this was, the Hebrew cultural model that Jesus encountered was one he rejected (the natural olive branch in Rom 11.)
I would suggest a good place to start is the early revelation to Abraham, then Jesus' explanations of that significance to the Jewish nation regarding their unique purpose. This brings up the question I have been asking for over a year; "What would Israel have needed to ‘look like’ to have been serving its redemptive mission in the earth and acceptable to Jesus?”
Were Gentiles to become Jews, or were we all to become something else, much more glorious. I do not think Israel was to be the end product, but the tool. Isn't that how we have confused the tools of scaffolding, our buildings and organizations, in that they are not goal; the building of living stones in which our King resides?
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What would Israel look like?
Jesus restructured the Jewish perception of the boundaries of the kingdom of God: who would enter; who would not; who would have first place. He broke the stereotype of the “people of God,” giving a distinctly different image of what it meant to be His people -
Blessed now are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry, merciful, pure, the peacemakers. Blessed are those without God’s justice: the kingdom belongs to these. Blessed are those who know the liberative practices of forgiveness, compassion, justice and mercy. Fellowship with outcasts replaces the fundamental morality of a society unwilling to eat with them. In this new dispensation, inclusiveness challenges old boundaries: both gender boundaries and the Jewish doctrine of election. Now faith and grace, obedience and compassion form the basis of God’s new people: not ethnicity; not gender; not position; not might. God’s new world order is breaking in and all people are summoned to share in it: the lame and the strong; the blind and those with sight; the poor; the powerful; the outcasts; the least – women, slaves, the unclean.
Those who responded were invited to participate as a new breed of revolutionaries: people willing to abandon the present way of being Israel, willing to leave behind whole definitions of the present worldview, present cultures and their values. That remains the invitation: to be the people of God newly constituted in Jesus Christ – to abandon our ways of being African or American or Italian or whatever and to follow in His subversive way of forgiveness, justice, inclusion, compassion, and peace; to be salt and light so that His kingdom, His reign is poignantly seen in His people. In short to “embrace God’s way of being humanity as he intended.” (Mark Priddy, “God’s Kingdom and the Revolution of Jesus”)
The kingdom of God does not erase culture but it must transfer identity and allegiance. Spiritual identity is more important than ethnic identity; spiritual priorities and values take precedence over cultural priorities and values; the Fatherhood of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the brotherhood of fellow Christians replace cultural ancestry. Ephesians 4:4 – 6 affirms that there is one body and one Spirit … one hope … one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 2:14 – 15 affirms that out of all nations comes one new nation, one people, one body one citizenship. “A people who live apart and do not consider themselves one of the nations” (Num 23:9).
Those who followed Christ redesigned their whole worldview: their praxis, their controlling stories, their symbolic universe and their basic theology around the fixed point of the kingdom. As NT Wright states, “They believed, in other words, as though the new age had already dawned.”
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Question regarding culture? God created culture i.e. the garden etc., Genesis. Since we are those made in his likeness to and are creative also, should we be creating kingdom culture meshed into society today?
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Terry,
That sounds good yet the meshing into invariably and historically results in the homogenization of the "kingdom culture". The culture itself becomes egocentric and dies. There is a mystery in what Ron writes about the living stones where the King resides. Even though "groups" of early believers were noted as being "peculiar" I don't think that was the dynamic of the group but the state of the otherwise disparate members.
Regards,
Mark
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Terry- Thousands of years of Church history testify how that works. Problems of “being in the world but not of it", and how to "love not the world or the things in it," complicate matters. What is “mesh-able" involves the issues of enculturation and contextualization, plus what one understands as The Kingdom of God. EMC did her doctoral study on this in an African context and it is published on my scripturewise.com web site. She is well qualified to address some of these issues. Jim wrote an article called “A Colony of Heaven” which he has been practically “walking out”. If you want a copy I’m sure he would email it to you.
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Let me try to tie this back into the original theme here on discipleship.
As "Living Stones where the King resides" how is the Kingdom of God being expressed or manifested in culture? In the culture where each of us lives? Isn't this part of Jesus command? As disciples aren't we to be training others to walk with the King and "BE" witnesses, to be living stones?
To make disciples, learners and of what? Luke an eye witness records this about Jesus in chapter 8:
After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Cuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.
Jesus himself said to John's disciples in reply to their questioning of him as to whether he was the King of the Kingdom they were expecting in Matt:11
Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”
Is this not the expression of the Kingdom we are to be training?
Let me share with you one of my recent experiences. I have been volunteering
at a nearby food bank for over a year now. Most of the people are very poor, drunks, addicts, elderly, sickly needing set free both physically, mentally and spiritually. As a volunteer handing out the food I have been given the freedom so far to share with the people (approx 80) before the distribution of food while they wait eat donuts and drink coffee.
I have used this opportunity to share as I'm led stories about life and Jesus, offering to pray for each of them. At first their willingness to let me pray was resistant. After a year now they are more receptive. This past week a woman shared with me that last time I prayed with her, about an hour later she received what ever it was we prayed for. Truthfully I don't even remember what I prayed for. But the delightful part was when I saw her eyes as she was telling me that it had restored her faith in God because she was touched by him when we did pray. I could see it in her that a change had taken place.
Where did Jesus focus? It wasn't on the educated religious Hebrews. In fact Matthew (an eye witness with a Hebrew cultural perspective) records Jesus's words in chapter 21:31
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.
So as disciples and those who train, what have we received from him and what are we giving away? How are we like Jesus?
I know we all have stories and maybe we could here some. What say you Carm?
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During the past thirty years that I have lived in Africa, and in particular the past twenty-plus years of ministry here in South Africa, I am increasingly convinced that the principal call of the church is not to make the gospel more plausible or palatable to nonbelievers but rather the call is to live in a manner that is faithful to the biblical message of the kingdom of God. The practical question then is what cultural consequences result from living the gospel, since as Christians we are committed to a particular view of creation and of human nature. In other words, how “different” should we be from the world around us? Tokunboh Adeyemo suggests that “Those who follow Jesus, who claim to be His disciples, demonstrate a truly counter-cultural life, whatever culture they come from.” How? “… by living their lives in terms of the values that prevail in the kingdom of heaven.” In part this means the unmasking of oppressive cultural boundaries because culture has the ability to “socialize [us] into a state of numbness…” as Musimbi Kanyoro contends. She’s correct. To make the claim “it’s our culture” often means “Hands off!!”
Cultural structures pressure people to conform and persecute or even kill them if they do not. Christians need a biblical theology that is able to answer the life questions people seek answers to: questions relating to sickness, death, the afterlife and the basic needs of every person for significance, purpose, and security, while critically contextualizing cultural beliefs and practices. The data which does not fit into the paradigm of the kingdom of God is left out as Earl Stanley Jones writes so poignantly in The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person.
“If it fits into the Kingdom, it is right and the right thing to do. If it doesn’t fit into the Kingdom, it is wrong and the wrong thing to do.”
Can Jesus be at home in every culture? Certainly. However, His identity as Sovereign Lord and King over all must be seen and understood; for He is above all nations, all cultures, every religion. To quote Collium Banda, “… he [Jesus] did not come as an answer to a particular culture; he came so that all ethnic groups will answer to him.” Our Christology and our expression of discipleship must be wary of being ethnicized. Such a model is lacking in sovereignity and a universal expression.
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That really helps pull the topic together for me. There is a tension here between the "cultural consequences" of a living faith and the act of "critically contextualizing" our faith within our culture. In both we can be in the dual danger of paying tribute to or callously disregarding
culture. If we blatantly disregard the former we're in danger of callous disregard of the context which ensconces those we've been sent to.
I think that we who've religiously swung from the "scaffolding" have beat people up by claiming to live out a faith based not on love but a misplaced "obedience", alienating the culture at large. The danger then is that we run too far in retreat and become "tolerant". But we've almost left no
corner to be painted into.
What seems to be happening at the moment is that our culture is becoming increasing homogenized with the baser elements getting equal ear and value in society. Corruption is the rule, not the exception. This will at some point become insoluble and intolerable for the silent masses. Those who just want to live at peace will increasing find it nearly impossible to do so as the cultural tensions and contradictions mount and frustration rules the day. That is ignoring whether the current economic direction of the United States (and the world) worsens and compounds and accelerates this trend by physical suffering and need combined with increasing oppression as folk lose the reigns of their own lives.
Regards,
Mark
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