My belief in Christ was additive until lately. Or maybe more like a preservative. It accentuated me with a lot of decorative ingredients, but clouded those you might consider the essentials. I loved the benefits of cleaning the “outside of my cup,” but never took note of the disturbances inside. God taught me a lot this year through the image of a flower. I realized how much I had come to depend, understand and even know my self as a product of my petals. So much so, in fact, that I’d lost sight (or never gained it in the first place) of an unchanging reality providing “the core” of any petal growth.

For me, becoming a follower of Christ “added” to who I already was, but opted for little to no loss, or recognition, of who I wasn’t. Furthermore, it was less about recognizing a centrality of “saving” from anything, per se, and more about explaining and expanding the me that I was accustomed to. The turn from my control, manipulation, will, or self-absorbtion was trumped by the turn toward worship, joy, passion and desires. And though necessary in their means and predestined timing, it’s now become obvious how these churchy/ministry'esque things started standing-out as defining “ends.” My faith was added on as an accessory, to many degrees, and never really came at a price. My “need” for God was less the cause of choosing Him than my desire. When I read a verse like, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me,” I assumed Jesus was talking to another era, or that our era was different and must function out of a different theology.

Martin Luther termed what I’m talking about a “Theology of Glory.” It’s the idea of the Western Church, essentially, that Christianity (I’m using that term intentionally) is about a better, easier and more enjoyable life. It preaches that, “Knowing Jesus as Lord and Savior,” means a happy, upward life where everything makes sense. Not only is it false doctrine, however, but dangerous doctrine. It negates the fallen nature of the world and thus negates the world’s ongoing need for the Cross. It minimizes a Father/child relationship of reliance and allows for structured, controlled and isolated bursts of “Christian living.” Author, Lynne Babb, explains that, “We inhabit a culture obsessed with liberty, but we habituate ourselves into bondage. We’ve forgotten what lack feels like and what liberty tastes like” (Fasting, page 10).

But how has this idea get so out of hand? Dallas Willard said, “The unrestrained hedonism of our own day comes historically from the 18th century idealization of happiness and is filtered through the 19th century English ideology of pleasure as ‘the’ good for people. Finally, it emerges in the form of our present “feel good” society—tragically pandered to by the popular culture and much of popular religion as well. Think about it. Isn’t the most generally applied standard of success for a religion service whether or not people feel good in it and after it? The preeminence of the “feel good” mentality in our world is what makes it impossible for many people now even to imagine what Paul and his contemporaries accepted as a fact of life. Our communities and our churches are thickly populated with people who are neurotic or paralyzed by the devotion and willing bondage to how they feel. Drug dependence and addiction is epidemic because of the cultural imperative to “feel good.” (The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 99-100).

Something I appreciate and pre-grieve the loss of here is dependence on God. I cannot get through a day without falling to my knees, or reaching for the skies, in brutal pursuit of needing and wanting Him…asking of His provision, grateful for His Saving, confident in His friendship, begging of His perspective, crying-out for His strength, reveling in His creativity, or resting in His arms. It’s an organic faith that engages my core, inducing a far cry from days in America. It’s rare to “need” God on any given day in Los Angeles. It rare to require of His assistance, assurance, or encouragement through an average run of classes, work, conversation, or errands. I can do life there without him. And certainly I can choose to “add Him in” when I want, but in terms of desperation, or unquenchable dependence—those days are a gem in a haystack. It takes an actual ‘request of grace’ for me to actually see my need for Him.

I’m thinking this tragedy of arrogance could well define the greatest epidemic an individual could incur. The idea of not needing God must reflect Satan’s supreme hope. When we settle into doing life alone, we’ve tasted of his manipulative, soothing voice that says, “Did God ‘really’ say don’t eat from the tree…surely you won’t ‘really’ die in doing so…In fact, tasting of ‘this’ fruit will actually allow you to be ‘like’ Him” (Genesis 3.1-4). “God, help me. Help break me of my pride. I want to know my need for You, regardless of where I am, or what it will take, to covet this cost.”

A.G. Sertillanges said: “Retirement is the laboratory of the spirit; interior solitude and silence are its two wings. All great works are prepared in the desert, including the redemption of the world. The precursors, the followers, the Master Himself, all obeyed or have to obey one and the same law. Prophets, apostles, preachers, martyrs, pioneers of knowledge, inspired artists in every art, ordinary men and the Man-God, all pay tribute to loneliness, to the life of silence, to the night.” (The Intellectual Life (Westminister, MD: Christian Classics, 1980), 48).