Rediscovering Ordinary
Highlights. We are addicted to highlights. We subject ourselves to a continuous media stream telling us what is noteworthy and what isn’t. Is it re-tweetworthy? Is it worth a share or a status update? We have come to value style over substance and flash over fundamentals. Of course, nothing is inherently wrong with highlights, style, or flash, but when these captivate our attention fully, we are in trouble. We can quickly lose our appreciation for and connection to ordinary.
We have teachers and teachings advocating a kind of Christianity that is “radical” and a kind of love that is “crazy.” They tell us we should consider the status quo an enemy and fight to enjoy our best life now, and to make sure we are driven full throttle by purpose. We begin to place ourselves in bondage, wondering if what we are doing is significant enough. We feel guilted into wishing for bigger and better things—for more fulfilling roles and more substantial ministries. But in our zeal for a kind of Christianity that makes a difference or that matters, we have become focused on outcomes and mountaintop moments. In doing so we are prone to overlook something important.
Hosting Jesus, Martha was so busy and distracted with preparations that she was missing out on the simplicity of fellowship with her Lord. Mary, on the other hand, sat down at His feet and listened to His word. When Martha expressed her frustration, Jesus said, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary” (Lk 10:41-42).
A few years later, Paul spent time in Corinth making tents along with Aquilla and Priscilla (Acts 18:2-3). He then spent a year and a half teaching the word at Corinth (Acts 18:11). We seem to laud Paul for his apostolic ministry, but we sometimes forget that he often labored to earn an income so he wouldn’t be a burden on those to whom he was ministering (e.g., 1 Thes 2:9). We recognize his teaching ministry as vitally important, but fail to consider the menial aspects of his life and ministry as equally important.
Even Jesus, during His earthly ministry, spent three years with His disciples—most of that time traveling the countryside doing ordinary things, and having ordinary conversations. Of course, there were the miracles and signs. Of course, there were the great public teachings. But Jesus spent a good deal of His time teaching these disciples in simple ways.
Paul later tells the Thessalonian believers to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commended you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need” (1 Thes 4:11-12). Paul was earnest in his exhortation that the Thessalonians be good at ordinary.
In Romans 12:1, we discover something remarkable. Paul exhorts believers to act in light of the mercies of God (those mercies that Paul had spent the previous eleven chapters discussing). He urges believers to present our bodies a living and holy sacrifice. You can’t get much more ordinary than that. God doesn’t ask for only our best moments—He wants our every moment! He doesn’t just want the very best we may think we have to offer—He wants all that we are! Everything we do in this life is done in our bodies. And He wants our bodies as a living and holy sacrifice. But this is a spiritual thing, right? After all, the verse says, “acceptable to God, your spiritual service of worship.” Right? Not exactly. The Greek word, translated “spiritual,” is ten logiken (τὴν λογικὴν)—it is the rational, reasonable (or logical) service of worship. It is only reasonable. It is what makes sense. Presenting our bodies to Him is not intended to be some radical or revolutionary idea—it is ordinary! It is the basic expectation He has for every believer.
It is remarkable that we are never told to do great things for God. Instead, we are told to abide in Him (Jn 15), to let His word richly abide in us (Col 3:16), to walk in the Spirit (Gal 5), and to be constantly in prayer (1 Thes 5:17). We are reminded that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (Eph 2:10). If we will just walk with Him, we will be right where we need to be, doing what He wants us to do. We are not called to be super-Christians with impressive portfolios of highlights. In fact, the things we consider highlights are often the very things that appeal to our personal pride and not His glory. Further, when there is fruit, it isn’t even us bearing that fruit—it is Him doing it in us (1 Cor 3:6; Gal 5:22).
It is sometimes said that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. Perhaps that is even understating things a bit. Christianity is about ordinary people (1 Cor 1:26-29), who God has saved by extraordinary grace through belief in Christ (Eph 2:8-9), who are given the opportunity to spend their ordinary moments walking with the Creator of all things. To be able to talk to Him in prayer at every moment, to be able to meditate on His word, to be able to share His pleasure in expressing His love toward others, to express gratitude to Him, and to pursue His glory at every moment—there is nothing crazy or radical about these things. They are the ordinary expectation He has for His children.
We don’t need to worry about whether He will allow us to do great things. We don’t need to worry about whether He will use us in big ways. Instead, lets consider what would happen if we just simply focused on Him and ran the race He put in front of us (Heb 12:1-2). Simple obedience, and simple fellowship. Perhaps the specific tasks are different for each one of us. Perhaps one plants and another waters (1 Cor 3:6). Perhaps one is a hand and another is a foot (1 Cor 12:12-27). Of course, there are many roles in the church, and different seasons within each individual life—some highlight moments, and some seemingly far less notable. But every moment spent with Him is the most beautiful kind of ordinary. With Him, every little moment, and every little task is a little taste of eternity and a little sampling of His glory. With Him, we have every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. That’s fantastic, right? Actually, that’s ordinary.
Christopher Cone Bio
Christopher Cone (ThD, PhD) is the President of Tyndale Theological Seminary and Biblical Institute, pastor of Tyndale Bible Church and author and editor of several books.
I appreciate the corrective here. The “Radical” thinking out there now is just the latest variant of addiction to drama that has affliction many Christians. God is not working unless something dramatic is happening (so I’m not especially impressed or thankful for each breath I draw, which is very much God graciously working); my Christian life isn’t healthy unless I’m seeing dramatic change (so I keep walking the aisle at every other service); my service/ministry efforts aren’t of value unless I’m seeing dramatic results (so I get discouraged and want to quit or resort to methods that product superficial drama), and so on.
There’s a reason the Christian life is called a walk, a fight, a race, etc…. all of these involve ordinary faithfulness over time.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
But being ordinary and simply faithful is boring & just … so … . yesterday. I need to be RELEVANT!!! :-)!
Terrific post Christopher! Well said. I am honestly willing to listen to anyone if they can show me from the Bible where there is an emphasis upon being Relevant. So far I can’t think of an example. Seems to me the Bible places a significant amount of weight upon simply being steadfast and faithful.
MMartin,
Maybe I’m wrong, but there didn’t seem like he was arguing against being relevant (although many would agree that too many Churches have made relevancy an idol) I got the impression that this was more geared towards those such as David Platt, Francis Chan, and the Shane Claibornes of evangelicalism who are calling followers of Jesus to a radical lifestyle of living out the gospel in a dramatic fashion, while ignoring passages of Scripture such as “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commended you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need” (1 Thes 4:11-12). Here is the CT article that explains their radical Christianity. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/march/here-come-radicals.html I’ve read Platt, Chan, and Claiborne and none of them really care about being relevant……
For instance, here is a story that shows the worldview of Shane Claiborne from his book, Irresistible Revolution.
A few years back, when I had multicolored dreadlocks, I got up to speak to several hundred people after being introduced as “the coolest Christian ever.” Startled and a bit distressed by the intro, I asked for a pair of scissors. I stood on the stage, took my cherished dreads in my hand, and said, “Dear ones, I am afraid I’ve become too cool. Christians are not called to be cool. We are called to be extraordinary.” and then I cut them all off.
In Platt’s case, much of his “radicalness” relates to economics. In Radical, he acknowledges several times that he really doesn’t know anything about economics, but if you pull the economic assumptions out of the book, there is nothing radical left.
He should study economics.
His emphasis on a giving-based economy can’t work. And Scripture is clear enough that humans were intended to be productive. On the other hand, it is “more blessed to give …” So where he’s on to something is that giving and sharing are good for the givers and sharers. In the short run, in situations of crisis, giving/sharing are also good for the receivers (e.g., the church in Jerusalem during the famine described in Acts).
But in the long run, while giving is healthy, receiving is not. People need to be productive and experience the rewards of their labors (see Thess. passage above) both for the sake of their imago dei obligations to be productive and for the sake of their own joy in living.
And ultimately, if everybody is giving and receiving and nobody is producing, there is no stuff to give away or receive.
This is why, among other reasons, Paul doesn’t tell the rich to stop being rich. He tells them to give while at the same time continuing to be rich (i.e., producing and selling). 1 Tim. 6:1717-19
But MMartin’s angle isn’t far off either. Much of the push for “relevant”—as I’ve seen it anyway—seems to be a trade off of the unexciting in favor of the exciting, i.e., highlights/drama instead of ordinary faithfulness.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aaron,
People do seem to get more excited about rich people who give all their money away for the sake of the gospel, rather than rich people that create wealth so that the gospel can go forward or create wealth so that the poor and/or unemployed can gain jobs in order to provide for their families. In our church we talk about “Business as Mission.” Our church has about 120 regular attenders and probably 50% of them live below the poverty line. At the same time, we are fortunate to have a few business owners that are growing their businesses and hiring people within the church. One of them has hired 3 men that used to be drug dealers/gang-members, 2 of which are now supervisors within the company. This same business owner is also mentoring them to eventually start their own business. As one of the pastors, I’ve had a few conversations with this young business owner that is rapidly becoming wealthy. Not only is he living out I Tim. 6: 17-19, but he is also mentoring two young men to do the same.
Yet throughout the history of Christianity, many Christians have propped up those that do radical, crazy stuff such as giving away all their money as a model of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. For instance, St. Francis. He gave away his fortune in order to be poor, start an order, and preach the gospel. Within the RC church and even among many in evangelicalism, he is revered, even to the point where one writer makes a case for St. Francis as the most incredible Christian ever. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/05/17/who-is-most-incredible-christian-ever/
Yet his form of RC theology negatively affected his ministry as well. He saw not only the love of money, but also money itself as evil. Instead he advocated a barter system. He often only hung out with the lepers and sometimes served them, but didn’t necessarily try to alleviate their suffering and pain. His motivation was that they were somehow Jesus in disguise and that it merited a former rich merchant like himself a place in heaven. Interestingly enough, his order, which depended on begging much like many other poor within the middle ages, modeled and later created a whole new beggar class in the late middle ages and early reformation period among the morphing cities of Europe. You are right. He and others need to study economics, but also history (but not just cherry-picking history).
is more what you do with the wealth—do you live more extravagantly? or do you use it to evangelize? or do you reinvest it to make more wealth in order to evangelize more?
you know? the issue isn’t having wealth or not, but what’s the purpose of the wealth.
[Aaron Blumer]I appreciate the corrective here. The “Radical” thinking out there now is just the latest variant of addiction to drama that has affliction many Christians.
Aaron, I am not sure why you think this is a corrective. It is obvious you don’t care for Platt’s book Radical. I do not remember reading where Platt argue that you have to let anyone else know what you are doing. The radical element is opposed to the American dream nonsense. You call it drama? Really? Lukewarm is in vogue in some places I suppose.
1 Kings 8:60 - so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other.
Here is a news flash. People can know a lot about economics and come to different conclusions on wealth. They really can. The Radical perspective is not based on ignorance of economics. It is a pushback to the status quo of how Americans view wealth. I can’t imagine that anyone with any discernment would have a hard time seeing the problems with the status quo.
What exactly is wrong with getting a bit radical? For some, it might mean giving away a bit of their oversized nest egg. For others such as my brother, it might lead to adopting a Chinese orphan. Trying to motivate people to do something abnormal (for we in the US) with money is a honorable thing. Trying to get people out of their comfort zone should be applauded. Most are not going to get “radical” but if you can at least move them away from their “wealth=king, capitalism=godliness” perspective, that is a good thing in my opinion.
I firmly believe that some are called to just the sort of radical living Platt writes about. The problem is that his thesis includes the idea—quite strongly—that is the way all Christians ought to live.
He attacks the “American dream” without ever really defining it… as is in vogue nowadays. (To be sure, some versions of the dream are unChristian. But the gist is “I want to use my abilities so that my family and I can prosper”… this is exactly what we find taught in the epistles)
As for learning economics and coming to different conclusions: it is not possible to understand economics even a little bit and conclude that it would work for everyone to give and no one to produce. Actually, even a study of logic would put a quick end to this idea. Even the notion that it would be good for all the really prosperous people of the world to give most of what they have away — there are some schools of economic thought that think this would work, yes, but they lean heavily toward philosophy rather than economics (a philosophy of idealism: how things ought to be vs. philosophy of realism: how things really work).
Joel, your situation is very encouraging to me. I firmly believe that “haves” should give for their own good and “have nots” should work for their own good. And then the overlap is for all of those transitional struggles where you have a crisis and need help to “get back on your feet,” as they say (crisis= everything from a bout of bad health to a hail storm wrecking your crop, to getting robbed, to your job going away, etc. … so there is still a good bit of opportunity to give without damaging the recipients by squelching their productivity)
About “drama”
I may have not been clear on what I meant by that. No audience is required. There’s an addiction to drama on the part of many Christians in the sense I described in my earlier post: unless something dramatic is going on, the Christian life is subpar. So the “drama” can be quite private. It’s still distortion of the normal Christian life. What is required of stewards is that a man be found faithful, not that he be found radical. On the other hand, as Christopher’s article shows, there is a certain built in radicalness that is part of the faithfulness. Jesus did talk about forsaking all to follow. Platt’s error is in concluding (sometimes but not other times) that this forsaking all is external rather than a comprehensive surrender of the heart—which may or may not involve giving stuff up on the outside, depending on how God leads an individual (We know this is the case because Jesus and Paul do not disagree and Paul tells the rich to use their wealth well, not give it all away)
…I’d love to do a more thorough and specific review of Radical, but alas, my copy is in a box in the garage. It’s all helpfully marked up, and annotated, but … not much help in a box.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aaron, you make 2 interesting points: 1) the possibility of different callings for people, and 2) the relationship between production and giving. I was recently in a workshop with Augustine and late antiquity scholar J. Patout Burns, who was looking into these concepts. There are some sermons in which Augustine directly addressed wealth and mutual responsibilities. In one that I remember, Augustine distinguished between property (land and means of production) and income (produce itself and currency gained through it). Augustine tells the rich that they ought to keep their means of production so they can manage it well, but that all their income beyond what would support them in a reasonable lifestyle (whatever that means) belongs to the poor. He forbids the rich to accumulate more wealth; all income beyond what is necessary for the preservation of the means of production must be distributed.
I have no idea whether Augustine’s advice is economically viable or not, or what the consequences of it would be in a modern economy very different from his own. I raise the issue to show the moral priorities. Augustine does not counsel poverty for everyone, since that would be self-defeating. However, he stresses communal responsibility much more strongly than modern capitalists, and consequently relativizes the “right” of personal property. The rich hold the means of production in trust for the whole community.
My Blog: http://dearreaderblog.com
Cor meum tibi offero Domine prompte et sincere. ~ John Calvin
There’s a balance to be sought, that’s for sure… but it’s really the underlying attitudes, convictions, values that are at issue.
What Augustine may have overlooked at the practical economic level is that what doesn’t grow tends to shrink and eventually die. So there is a degree to which a business has to continually grow. Personally, I can’t embrace the idea that there is anything inherently wrong with growing wealth.
As Jesus shows in the sermon on the mount (which would have had a primarily poor audience), greed does not require that you have a lot. Nor is it in inherent in having a lot or producing more beyond the much you already have.
But there are dangers there to be sure. The problem with the Rich Fool (Luke 12.18) is not that he wants to keep expanding his business. It’s that his values are inverted. Rather than pursing business excellence as a means to an end (glory of God by helping others, using your gifts to their fullest, etc.) it was the end in itself. Luke 12.21 makes the point—“and is not rich toward God.” The passage does not say “instead of being rich toward God,” as though the two were mutually exclusive.
To return to the economic angle, what the “don’t keep accumulating more” crowd often overlooks is that when the rich get richer, they do things with their wealth. There are exceptions, of course. Some just hoard it and sit on the pile like the dragons of the old tales. But this is exceptional because even wealth multiplied by investment is wealth that is doing something. Those investments are funding companies that are producing products and employing people in the production.
And most rich folks spend a lot. What they buy employs people, even if what they’re buying is one more car in their fleet of exotic vehicles.
There is sin and excess in human nature. But it doesn’t necessarily look like a Fortune 500 CEO buying a(nother) private jet.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Featured Resource
Discussion