I recently read the latest memoir by a Christian writer whose books I've enjoyed in the past. Except in the four years since her last book, she's left her husband and married a woman. I knew this, which is the reason why I wanted to check out her new book. I wanted to hear what she would say about God.
My Kindle told me I only made it through about 60% of the book, but it was enough to answer my question. God didn't make much of an appearance, and seemed to go by a different name: "Knowing." Besides the usual hilarious parenting stories that this writer is known for, most of the book was about her new-found empowerment. Comparing herself to a [expletive] cheetah, she wrote about freeing herself from the limiting, misogynistic cultural expectations that had made her life small and disappointing. She's stopped putting everyone else before herself. She's stopped deferring. She's started doing whatever it takes to live the "truest, most beautiful" version of herself, not letting anyone else decide what that looks like for her. That includes the "religion" that she followed for years.
I think about her message, so common in our world right now, in light of the cross, which is the focus of this weekend. I hear Jesus saying that whoever wants to be greatest must first be a servant to everyone. And telling me that if I want to live my best life, I should pick up my cross and follow Him. Because if I fight to live my life on my own terms, I'll lose it, but if I surrender it to Him, my life will be saved.
I picture Jesus washing feet. And saying, "Not my will but Yours be done." I see Him choosing to live not as a cheetah or even the Lion of Judah that He had every right to be, but as a sacrificial lamb, "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Is. 53:3). I envision Him being beaten, tortured, and humiliated, the suffering servant and the truest, most beautiful version of Himself.
We all want to be free. We want to feel fully alive and empowered to be exactly who we're supposed to be. It goes against everything our culture tells us and even against our own intuition to believe that the way to do that is through humble self-surrender. To someone we've never met and can't see. Who asks us to die to ourselves, lean not on our own understanding, and love our neighbors every bit as much as we love ourselves. Not just in theory, but in practice, day in and day out.
It's funny to me that this author and so many like her think that the way of Christ is the way of boring, restrictive conformity. That's not true at all. It's actually the most wild, radical, subversive lifestyle possible.
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Cor. 1:18)
