À la carte Jesus

I went to lunch with a friend the other day and he suggested we go to one of those “make your own” pizza places that are heating up (no pun intended) the lunch scene. The concept has carried over from simple sandwich shops to single serving pizza shops to build your own burger joints. Restaurants are shifting away from generic entrées and adapting to à la carte style menus, where you can create your own dining experience, tailored specifically to your tastes and preferences.

Customization is highly desirable, even expected, in our culture. We alter our houses, our closets, and our cars. We tailor our clothes to fit our bodies, we buy sandals that mold to the arch of our feet, and we sleep on mattresses that adjust to our bodies. We have a liking for things that are modified to our own preferences, tastes, and opinions. We like to pick and choose in order to have the à la carte experience.

But when did we start to also have an à la carte Jesus?

The world will tell you the idea of “Truth” with a capital “T” is something that is very much personal; We define our own values, beliefs, and ideas of right and wrong. With this logic, we've reached an epidemic of everyone is seeking truth with no one able to find it or to define it. We left it so open-ended and so individualized, that nothing holds weight outside of its beholder. In a “what floats your boat” mentality, we are left with only our own opinions and our own accountability, and if you factor in how many times you have been wrong or mistaken or failed, there is not much hope for trust in your own judgment. 

The beauty of God’s word is that it brings us the very Truth our souls so desperately crave. The Truth with a capital “T” kinda stuff. 2^nd Samuel 22:31 tells us, “God's way is perfect. All the LORD's promises prove true. He is a shield for all who look to him for protection.”

Perfect.

God’s way is perfect.

All His promises are proven true.

But despite the irrefutable, undeniable perfection and sovereignty of God and the flawed and crooked nature of our ways, we opt for the à la carte option; we tailor God to us instead of us to God.

It’s a contradiction. We come to know perfection, God himself.  The very One who died so we may live. But we don’t accept all of him.  But we don’t accept all of Him. We remove bits and pieces of His Truth and replace them with our desires and compromises. We choose fun times, hazy memories, tempting options, and slippery slopes because after all, God loves us and He forgives. He will forgive our bad decisions and all will be well. He’s got to expect us to fail at some point anyway, right?

Contemporary Christianity is disturbing. It’s a combination of a) picking and choosing principals that fit my opinions/lifestyle/desires and b) conscious acceptance of wrongdoing because it’s “only natural” and because Jesus loves and forgives no matter what. No longer do we instill in ourselves a fear of the Lord nor embark on a pursuit for holiness. Instead we fear the opinions of others and fear the thought of forgoing personal desire. The pursuit of holiness has been bypassed by the pursuit of pleasure and, somewhere in between all that, we ask God to bless our food and go to church. We’re “good Christians”; we talk about God but we miss the point of it all.

In Kevin DeYoung’s book, “The Hole in Our Holiness,” he writes what we have all failed to acknowledge: the holiness we are called to pursue and that the pursuit of holiness is the indisputable evidence that we are seeking God above all:

“Passionate exhortation to pursue gospel-driven holiness is barely heard in most of our churches…I’m talking about the failure of Christians, especially younger generations and especially those most disdainful of ‘religion’ and ‘legalism,’ to take seriously one of the great aims of our redemption and one of the required evidences for eternal life—our holiness. My fear is that as we rightly celebrate, and in some quarters rediscover, all that Christ has saved us from, we are giving little thought and making little effort concerning all that Christ has saved us to. Shouldn’t those most passionate about the gospel and God’s glory also be those most dedicated to the pursuit of godliness? I worry that there is an enthusiasm gap and no one seems to mind.”

As we bypass holiness in our daily living, we fall into passivity about celebrating that which Christ saved us into. We don’t cling to His word, but pull it as needed. When we commit to Christ, we commit all of ourselves to all of who He is. We are called to be dead to ourselves so we may be found new in Christ. It’s an all or nothing deal and it’s where contemporary Christianity fails.We can hear our pastor preach one thing and read the Truth of the scripture, and yet later mold it to fit a situation or choice before us. In our attempt to satisfy both self and soul, we create an à la carte Jesus.

We want God to bless us in all parts of our lives; we want Him to bless our health, our relationships, our finances, our living situations, and our children. We want the power we know God holds. In Ephesians it is written that God’s power surpasses all – “Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes,” but we cannot expect to have God’s mighty power to be at work within us, when we refuse to surrender all of ourselves to him. 

DeYoung writes that “that world does not provide any cheerleaders on the path to holiness.” The world doesn’t find holiness to be a sexy notion and the pursuit of holiness is not a journey the world wants to pursue. Yet, we aren't a part of this world, and as we seek Christ and die to ourselves, we experience His power in ways we never thought imaginable. 

The path to holiness is the pursuit of become like Christ, with the understanding that, while we will never be Him, we can strive to be like Him. This starts with committing to all His ways. We tailor every inch of ourselves to Christ: not vice versa. As we become more like Him, we are transformed and experience the very joy, peace, and love every soul desires.

We cannot attempt to customize Christ’s perfection, but rather should embark on the pursuit of holiness.

“Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearance's.” - Kevin DeYoung

A special thank you to Andrew Schalin, for editing for content and clarity.