Real Change, Real Belief

“Change you can believe in.” That was on the bumper of a car that passed me on the interstate the other day; President Obama’s platform during his first campaign. Obviously the slogan resonates differently with me than a political promise. In fact, I think viewing it from the vantage point of the image at left really helps put things in perspective.

DQR is certainly about persecution in the past, but additionally, it is aimed to remind us that even in the US there is a day looming on the horizon when Christians will have to stand or fall in their faith. When the Apostle Paul said, “… all those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,” (2 Timothy 3:12, HCSB) it was not for shock value. To an extent, we all face rejection and suffering for displaying sincerity in serving Jesus Christ. What the story of DQR taught me was we must live out our faith independent of the societal context we are living in. For more than two centuries, Christians in the US enjoyed incredible freedom and potential to act as leaven (an influence on) the culture around them. But as many wise speakers in recent years, notably Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, have pointed out quite succinctly, that time is passing. It is sufficient to say the causes behind the decline of the church in America may primarily stem from the distracted way we in the Church lived our lives. We cannot, however, equate America with our faith and certainly not as God’s chosen people. He calls everyone, but an affirmative response is required. As heartbreaking as it may be, we have to recognize that “… many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” (Philippians 3:18, HCSB). Society is forgetting what positive moral influences Christianity had on it and moving towards something more akin to the world during Christianity’s birthing.

That is not to say we shouldn’t plead and petition to try and steer our nation from sin. But we have to start focusing on our own idolatry, complacency, and numbness to the message Christ has imparted to us. We are His ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) and we need to live every moment in the light of that truth. Men won’t always endure sound teaching (2 Timothy 4:3), in the early days of the Church, many thought the message of the cross was foolishness. Believers faced social exile, beatings, and even death for their faith, but they still believed and persevered. (It’s also worth noting that Paul instructed believers to pray for the leaders of their day, even though many wanted to kill Christians or at least had a healthy distaste for them). We have to be sincere and live out our faith daily before others, forsaking all this world’s charms in favor of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord of all. Only then will we be able to stand fast in our faith and shine like stars in the night (Philippians 2:15) as we were meant to.

In DQR, Marcus starts off having lost everything of worldly value. Yet it was these very things that imprisoned him and kept him from pursuing God and His will as he always should have. Similarly, we often allow what we have to keep us from following after God with full sincerity and zeal. That’s not to say that having possessions is bad or that we must all drop everything and rush to apply to be missionaries. Even in the early church, some believers never left Jerusalem when sharing the Gospel. But there is a fine line between having possessions and being had by them. I do not claim to have mastered that balance, only to have become acutely aware during the writing of DQR that as Marcus delved more and more deeply into seeking God’s purpose for his life, the things of this world he had lost, and even those that he had gained back, ceased to be of consequence. Against all intuition, we are asked to place more value on those things that we cannot see and will not see till standing before our Savior at our earthly life’s end, than what we can experience with our senses. It is an issue, I feel, stems back to the fall of man in Eden. There, man did not follow God and love Him properly when he had everything and had perfect perception of God, thus we now pursue God by faith. God proves us to be true for eternity in His presence by living out lives of faith (Faith being,”… the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” – Hebrews 11:1, ESV) in His Son’s atoning work. I’m not suggesting that we maintain our salvation through works. God must carry us even in our faith, but our reliance on Him to do so serves us better than our feeble attempts to manage our souls ever could.

So, to summarize, the things of this world have distracted us for too long and we have chosen to pursue too much of this life’s contents, good and bad. We are commanded to make a change, to turn and follow God with all our hearts, and when we do we are transformed, just as Marcus was in DQR. There is one source from which the change can and must originate, in Jesus Christ Himself, and that is truly a change you can believe in.