Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

by David Platt

Since that day countless men and women in the history of Christianity have died for their faith. Some of them were not just hung on crosses; they were burned there. Many of them went to their crosses singing. One Christian in India, while being skinned alive, looked at his persecutors and said, “I thank you for this. Tear off my old garment, for I will soon put on Christ’s garment of righteousness.”

As he prepared to head to his execution, Christopher Love wrote a note to his wife, saying, “Today they will sever me from my physical head, but they cannot sever me from my spiritual head, Christ.” As he walked to his death, his wife applauded while he sang of glory.

This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.

I was in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, teaching in an Indonesian seminary. Before they graduate, the students in this seminary are required to plant a church, with at least thirty new, baptized believers, in a Muslim community. I spoke at their commencement ceremony, and as the graduates walked across the stage, I was captivated by the humble yet confident look on their faces. Every one of them had fulfilled the church-planting requirement. The most solemn part of the day was a moment of silence for two of their classmates who had died at the hands of Muslim persecutors.

The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability.

While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God.

This is how God works. He puts his people in positions where they are desperate for his power, and then he shows his provision in ways that display his greatness.

We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community.

If I, a poor man, simply by prayer and faith, obtained without asking any individual, the means for establishing and carrying on an Orphan-House, there would be something which, with the Lord’s blessing, might be instrumental in strengthening the faith of the children of God, besides being a testimony to the consciences of the unconverted, of the reality of the things of God. This, then, was the primary reason for establishing the Orphan-House.… The first and primary object of the work was (and still is:) that God might be magnified by the fact, that the orphans under my care are provided with all they need, only by prayer and faith without anyone being asked by me or my fellow-laborers whereby it may be seen, that God is faithful still, and hears prayer still.

Think about it this way. Maybe you are going through a struggle in your life. A tragedy strikes you or someone close to you, and you are hurting. So you go to God in prayer, and you ask him to comfort you. Do you realize what God does? He doesn’t give you comfort. Instead he gives you the Holy Spirit, who is called the Comforter.11 The Holy Spirit literally comes to dwell in you and puts the very comfort of Christ inside you as you walk through your pain.

Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit.

The next morning we arrived at the church building, and the worship service began. The pastor rose to welcome everyone, and during his introductory remarks he began talking about how thankful he was to be living in the United States. I am not sure

what sparked the rousing patriotic address that followed, but for the next few minutes he told the church that there was no chance he would ever live anywhere else in the world. Amens were firing left and right from the crowd. Engulfed in nationalistic zeal, I was just waiting for Lee Greenwood to burst into song in the background. Minutes later I got up to preach on going to all nations with the gospel. When I finished, I walked down to the front while the pastor got up to close the service. These were his words: “Brother David, we are so excited about all that God is doing in New Orleans and in all nations, and we are excited that you are serving there.” He continued, “And, brother, we promise that we will continue to send you a check so we don’t have to go there ourselves.” He wasn’t finished.

“I remember a time at my last congregation when a missionary from Japan came to speak,” he said. “I told that church that if they didn’t give financial support ...

The service was dismissed, and my wife and I climbed into the car to drive home. I could hardly believe the things I had heard. A range of emotions consumed me—anger, sadness, disappointment, confusion. But as I began to process what had happened over the last twenty-four hours, I was struck by a frightening realization. Could it be that this deacon and this pastor expressed what most professing Christians in America today believe but are not bold enough to say? This may sound a bit harsh, but consider the reality.

How many of us are embracing the comforts of suburban America while we turn a deaf ear to inner cities in need of the gospel? How many of us are so settled in the United States that we have never once given serious thought to the possibility that God may call us to live in another country? How often are we willing to give a check to someone else as long as we don’t have to go to the tough places in the world ourselves? How many of us parents are praying that God will raise up our children to leave our homes and go overseas, even if that means they may never come back? And how many of us are devoting our lives to taking the gospel to people in hostile regions around the world where Christians are not welcomed? Certainly few of us would be so bold as to say we “would just as soon God annihilate all those people and send them to hell,” but if we do not take the gospel to them, isn’t that where they will go?

“God loves me so that I might make him—his ways, his salvation, his glory, and his greatness—known among all nations.”

Now God is the object of our faith, and Christianity centers around him. We are not the end of the gospel; God is.

And let me introduce you to Jeff, a businessman like the one I mentioned earlier, who climbed the ladder of success, only to realize that success in the kingdom of God involves moving down,

“I’m going to make disciples of all nations,” he said. “So you are going to impact the world by making disciples of all nations?” That grin immediately spread across his face. “Why not?” he asked. Then he went back to sipping his tea. I’ll never forget those two words. Why not?

What is shocking is that when Jesus summarizes his work on earth, he doesn’t start reliving all the great sermons he preached and all the people who came to listen to him. He doesn’t talk about the amazing miracles he performed—giving sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk, and feeding thousands of people with minimal food. He doesn’t even mention bringing the dead back to life. Instead he talks repeatedly about the small group of men God had given him out of the world.

This is the picture. The plan of Christ is not dependent on having the right programs or hiring the right professionals but on building and being the right people—a community of people—who realize that we are all enabled and equipped to carry out the purpose of God for our lives.

Disciple making is not a call for others to come to us to hear the gospel but a command for us to go to others to share the gospel. A command for us to be gospel-living, gospel-speaking people at every moment and in every context where we find ourselves.

Disciple making is not about a program or an event but about a relationship. As we share the gospel, we impart life, and this is the essence of making disciples. Sharing the life of Christ. This is why making disciples is not just about going, but it also includes baptizing.

Think about it. What would be the most effective way for this new follower of Christ to learn to pray? To sign her up for a one-hour-a-week class on prayer? Or to invite her personally into your quiet time with God to teach her how to pray? Similarly, what would be the most effective way for this new follower of Christ to learn to study the Bible? To register her in the next available course on Bible study? Or to sit down with her and walk her through the steps of how you have learned to study the Bible?

In the process we are realizing that we actually were intended to reach the world for the glory of Christ, and we are discovering that the purpose for which we were created is accessible to every one of us.

Today more than a billion people in the world live and die in desperate poverty. They attempt to survive on less than a dollar per day. Close to two billion others live on less than two dollars per day. That’s nearly half the world struggling today to find food, water, and shelter with the same amount of money I spend on french fries for lunch. More than twenty-six thousand children today will breathe their last breath due to starvation or a preventable disease.

If there is no sign of caring for the poor in our lives, then there is reason to at least question whether Christ is in our hearts.

Isn’t the hidden assumption among many Christians in our culture that if we follow God, things will go well for us materially? Such thinking is explicit in “health and wealth” teaching, and it is implicit in the lives of Christians whose use of possessions looks virtually the same as that of our non-Christian neighbors.

She paused before continuing. “When I come to our church meetings, I look around, and most of us are very poor, and we are meeting here at great risk to our lives.” Then she looked at me and asked, “Does this mean we do not have enough faith?” In that moment I realized the extent to which we, as churches and Christians across America, are in some cases explicitly and in other cases implicitly exporting a theology that equates faith in Christ with prosperity in this world. This is fundamentally not the radical picture of Christianity we see in the New Testament.

First, some try to universalize Jesus’ words, saying that he always commands his followers to sell everything they have and give it to the poor. But the New Testament doesn’t support this. Even some of the disciples, who admittedly abandoned much to follow Christ, still had a home, likely still had a boat, and probably had some kind of material support. So, obviously, following Jesus doesn’t necessarily imply a loss of all your private property and possessions.

This passage begs the question, am I willing to live a life that is content with food and clothing, having the basic necessities of my life provided for? Or do I want more? Do I want a bigger house or a nicer car or better clothes? Do I want to indulge in

This is a key question, and if we are not careful in how we answer it, we will miss the point of what God desires to teach us about our possessions. We don’t need to sell or give away nice clothes, nice cars, nice houses, or surplus possessions because they are inherently bad. As we have seen, wealth and possessions are not inherently evil; they are good in and of themselves. So we don’t sell them or give them away because they are sinful.

The point is also not that we need to feel guilty whenever we purchase anything that is not an absolute necessity. The reality is that most everything in our lives in the American culture would be classified as a luxury, not a necessity.

Let’s dare to take things a step further. What if we actually set a cap on our lifestyles? What if we got to the point where we could draw a line, saying, “This is enough, and I am giving away everything I have or earn above this line”?

Consider what could happen. What if you and I decided that having a $50,000 salary doesn’t necessitate living a $50,000 lifestyle? What if you and I had simple caps on our lifestyles and were free to give the rest of our resources away for the glory of Christ in the neediest parts of the world?

We are tempted, though, to settle for throwing our scraps to the poor.

Listen to this e-mail from Lisa, a woman in our faith family: For months I’ve been listening to the Word and banging my head against the wall, trying to reconcile my life with what the gospel demands. I’ve been trying to find some comfortable alternative between my life now and the radical idea of selling everything I own and leaving the comfortable life to take the gospel to the world. But I’ve realized there is no comfortable alternative. Risking it all is the only option. So I’m selling my stuff on the Internet and trying to pay off my debt so that I can give as much as possible. In order to pay off that debt, I really am going to have to sell almost everything I have except the shirt on my back (and maybe a spare!).

I can’t wait to see what happens from here. I’m totally unprepared, totally inadequate, totally scared. But I’m ready. Bring it on.

The lesson I learned is that the war against materialism in our hearts is exactly that: a war. It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably.

Our neglect of the poor illustrates much about where our hearts lie. But even more than that, the way we use our money is an indicator of our eternal destination. The mark of Christ followers is that their hearts are in heaven and their treasures are spent there.

In this system of thinking, faith is a matter of taste, not of truth. The cardinal sin, therefore, is to claim that one person’s belief is true and another person’s belief is false. The honorable route is to rest quietly in what you believe and resist the urge to share your beliefs with someone else.

One of the members of our faith family was serving a woman infected with HIV, and our team member was accidentally stuck with the needle she had been using. As if this were not enough, the same thing happened to a second team member hours later.

I will not soon forget Sahil’s testimony. He and his wife both grew up in Muslim homes in India. She came to Christ and then introduced Sahil to Christ. But as soon as their families discovered they had become Christians, they were forced to flee their community at the risk of their lives. In the years that followed, they grew in Christ and in their desire to see their family know Christ. Slowly they began to initiate renewed contact with the family members they loved. And slowly their family members began to respond. They eventually welcomed Sahil and his wife back to their community, and from all appearances things were going well. Then one day Sahil dropped off his wife for a meal with her family while he went to be with his family. His wife sat down at the table with her family and began to drink and eat. Within moments she was dead. Her own parents had poisoned her. You will be betrayed.

How will I ever show the gospel to the world if all I send is my money? Was I really so shallow as to think that my money is the answer to the needs in the world?