Disicipleship and personal rights

At Sycamore, Brian considers the have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too attitude rampant in U.S. culture and its effects on the church:

Until we reinvent an understanding that God created a world where you can’t have your cake and eat it to, we will never be the disciples or the church that will change the world. When our service, our love, our humility, and our obedience fails in the face of the ego trip of “personal rights,” the unbelieving world will see what we really are deep down: just like them. Only with the trappings and restrictions of a religious conscience draped on us like an ill-fitting suit.

True revival and societal change comes when people see that Christianity isn’t changed life, it’s new life. That the followers of Jesus aren’t just dressed up humanists, they’re members of a new kingdom that breaks all the rules we’ve been taught about what we deserve and how wedeserve to get it whenever we choose. A kingdom that understands that life is about sacrifice, not about avoiding it. When disciples of that kingdom begin to flood this nation, an unbelieving people will start to see that the body of Christ really does have a resemblance.

Amen.