The Heart of the Matter – The Cross

The Heart of the Matter – The Cross

Robert L. Withers

The other morning, I met someone at a coffee shop to talk about small groups. I sat in an area of the shop that I don’t normally sit in, and I wore a hat that I don’t normally wear. The thing about both the hat and the place where I sat is that I thought about them both for more than a moment – being a person of habit I don’t typically ponder where I’m going to sit because I sit in the area where I always sit. Nor do I usually give much thought to what hat I’m going to wear because I have two or three that are my regulars.

However, on this morning I thought a bit about which hat to wear, choosing one that I seldom wear; it is a hat with the name of a firm I used to work for. Once in the coffee shop, having poured my coffee at the coffee bar, I pondered where to sit. Regarding the hat I wondered, “Why am I giving so much thought to this?” Regarding where to sit I thought, “Why am I giving so much thought to this? Am I losing my ability to make simple decisions?”

Not long after the man I was there to meet arrived and we began our conversation, another patron walked by our booth, looked at my hat, and asked, “Are you based out of Tidewater [Virginia]?” I replied that I was retired from the firm and that I had been based in Richmond [VA]. The patron then sat in a booth just behind ours.

Awhile later, after the man I met left and as I got up to leave, I went over to the patron who had commented on my hat and asked, “Have you done business with Drucker and Falk?” This question led to one of the most significant conversations I’ve had in many years, significant in a number of facets. In order to respect the privacy of the other man, whom I will call “Alex”, I will not use actual names.

After Alex and I talked about commercial real estate and property management, our conversation moved into our family and spiritual lives. Alex had spent much of his life in a business that he felt God had called him to – a business whose primary market was the Christian community and whose primary suppliers were “Christian”. However, after investing many years of his life, after deep disappointments in “Christian” business relationships, after suffering depression, after deep financial loss – not only had Alex been forced to close his business, he experienced disappointment with Christ and the Bible to the point where he no longer trusts the Bible and the Christ of the Bible.

As Alex shared with me the story of how one major “Christian” supplier treated him, even though it made no economic sense, and certainly no Christian sense, I was not surprised, for I long ago realized that being a “Christian” business or institution or ministry or church does not necessarily mean that Christ and the Gospel come first; often self-interest comes first. I have come to believe that unless we are willing to lose it all for Christ that we cannot follow Christ, not simply as individuals, but as organizations, churches, institutions – after all, isn’t this the essence of Mark 8:34 – 38?

Alex has been unable to reconcile his sense of God’s “call” to him in the business with the failure of the business. Perhaps also the nature of the failure contributes to the difficultly, for one would expect that “Christian” suppliers would work with their customers to assist them in restructuring and perpetuating their businesses for the glory of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. In other words, when Alex asked for help not only did he not receive help, but a significant supplier with massive resources slammed a door in his face.

For Alex the business was a ministry, and indeed it was a ministry – a class of ministry which I have used over the fifty-plus years my Christian life. Alex felt called to a ministry, he responded to the call, he invested himself and his family in the call, and after many years of the investment of his heart and soul and resources in the ministry, the ministry “failed”.

Why? How could the Bible be true? How could the promises of comfort and provision in the Bible be true? What kind of God calls people to a task, a life, a ministry – and then lets them down into the abyss of failure?

This is Alex’s dilemma; this quandary has resulted in Alex becoming a “theist” (his word) rather than a Christian, with “theist” perhaps being a bit optimistic.

I wrote above that this conversation was significant in a number of ways, levels, facets. One of these facets is that I have experienced many of the same things that Alex has; I have know the pain, the depression, the disappointment…and much else, as he has; but what I want to explore is the idea that when God calls us that He calls us to be successful – that particularly American idea is a lie, and yet it drives much of what American Christians think and do, and when it leads to disappointment it leads to confusion and despair.

If “success” legitimizes the call of Christ to a ministry, to service, to a place in the Body of Christ, to a role in evangelism, to a role in society – then what are we to make of the Crucifixion? Of the death of Stephen and James? Of Paul’s words that, “All those in Asia have turned away from me”? Of the martyrs and confessors of the faith down through the centuries?

If “success” legitimizes the call of Christ, then what are we to make of the Word of the Cross which calls us to deny ourselves and lose all for Christ so that we might gain all in Christ? What are we to make of the idea that we are to fix our attention on the things that are unseen, rather than the things that are seen; knowing that the things that are seen are temporal while the things that are unseen are eternal?

How is it that we, in America, have so perverted the Gospel as to equate Gospel ministry with success? How is it that we are to know Christ “in the koinonia of His sufferings, being conformed to His death”?

I have long been disturbed by the sociological, marketing, and entertainment thrust of American Christianity. By the idea that the end justifies the means. By the rule of pragmatism. By the dollar as the arbiter of our decision-making. By the worship of numbers, numbers, and more numbers – whether those numbers are dollars or people. By the seduction of the spotlight of the world. By the superficiality of much popular ministry and Christian media and publishing.

We are called to follow the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ and if we are truly in Christ then we are not of the world; not only are we not of the world, but the world has been crucified to us and we have been crucified to the world (Galatians 6:14).

As I, and others, have observed, we have become a Christless Christianity.

As Bonhoeffer wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

We have adopted the world’s leadership models, the world’s marketing models, the world’s sociological models, the world’s financial models, the world’s organizational models, the world’s educational models, the world’s business models, the world’s moral models, the world’s epistemological models (especially lethal!), and the world’s aesthetic models – and no doubt many more. We have legitimized the prostitution of the professing-church!

In doing so we have replaced the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ with the idols of the world – system. We have effectively suppressed a Biblical understanding of the Cross and Christ’s sufferings, sufferings which we are called to participate in – sufferings which we are to see as koinonia with Christ and with one another.

And so I should not be surprised that I meet a dear, dear man, who has given so much of his life to Christ, responding to a call of Christ, who now cannot reconcile his experience with the bill-of-goods-snake-oil which the Western Church has sold him, and which he mistakes for Biblical teaching.

I am thankful that my early Christian mentors, both contemporary and historical, instilled in me an awareness of the Cross of Christ and the call to suffer with Him and for Him. I am thankful that I have continued my pilgrimage with men and women, contemporary and historical, who have embraced the Cross as a way of life – and who have fought the seduction of cheap theology, cheap marketing, cheap epistemology, cheap leadership, and soft and cheap living.

As Jim Elliot wrote (quoting from memory), “He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”

I hope I’ll see Alex again.