It is important that I communicate this particular truth to everyone, important because we supposedly live in dangerous times, and we are told to fear “dangerous” people. But here is a more important Truth: God is dangerous!
Americans (and all Westernized Cultures) have tried to tame God, but to no avail, the Holy One will not be confined or consumed by our whims or appetites.
We have tamed God, un-Deified God, molded him to our desires forgetting that the clay has no say to what the potter will make it into. We have made Jesus the Messiah into Casper Milquetoast…a spineless, mushy, materialistic Messiah.
We have taken the very Bread of Life and turned Him into a palatable tea-time snack.
We have made Jesus into a comfortable suburban soccer mom/dad, who comes alongside our best intentions for the best life we can have: a house, 2.5 kids, a Prius or SUV, designer clothes, and a pittance of our time and money to give to the majority of the world that lives in poverty, under oppression, hungry, hurting, addicted and chained to despondency.
We in the West have tried but to no avail; God will not be tamed. God is dangerous. God is an all-consuming Fire (Hebrews 12). Jesus came to divide mother from daughter and father from son. Jesus came to bring a sword and Fire (Matthew 10). Jesus came to preach good news to the poor…and friends do not be deceived: good news for the poor is always bad news for the rich.
Jesus is dangerous, for He will turn our worlds upside down in order to turn them right-side up. We’ve made Jesus an addendum to our agendas and desires rather than the Prime Motive, the divine Modus Operandi to our days and lives.
Following Jesus is dangerous and deadly: doing so will break our hearts (in order to heal them in a healthy way); it will kill us (the cross we are called to carry will slaughter our ego, our will, our plans, and maybe even our lives). It is a dangerous thing to love our enemies, give to the one who asks, to go two miles when we are asked to go one, to sell all that we have and give it to the poor (ref. Sermon on the Mount, Gospel of Luke). These things are scary as shit.
Make no mistake about it, God is dangerous. God brings down the rulers and rises up the broken and poor (Luke, ch. 1 – 6); God humbles the proud and breaks the arrogant and gives life to the downtrodden. God comes to us, not in the gold of kings or presidents, but in the distressing disguise of the poor and homeless.
God is dangerous.
God loves the unlovable and the unlovely, is not interested in our suits or ties or Gucci or DKNY. God cares not for our fancy words, smooth talking, nor our degrees, licenses, or certifications.
Jesus is radical but we care more about the whiteness of our teeth than the words that come out of them; we care more for the way things “look” rather than the way things are. We keep Jesus in the background, the backseat, the closet, or the dark.
We should tremble and remove our fine leathered shoes and realize we are on Holy Ground, for God is a consuming fire and He will burn up all the dross that we call precious and priceless.
God longs for us to surrender everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – to Him and to love Him more than others. Oh yes, God is zealously jealous and will remove anything that stands between us and single minded devotion to Him if we are not careful.
Oh yes, God is dangerous. So shut your ears to the manicured hands of those with expensive suits, whitened smiles, big churches, nice homes, and realize that one day, the Good Shepherd will come and separate the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25). I tremble when I realize that the sheep and the goats have one thing in common: they both bleat. So how do I tell the difference in what they say? For according to this dangerous God, the only difference between the sheep and the goats was what they did and did not do for the poor!
God is dangerous…and His love will turn you upside-down, but in the end you will find that the world looks so beautiful, so radically different when seen through the eyes of (our) dangerous God!
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