hey Jude

[warning: this post was written by someone who draws applications from unusual sources]

The other day I was listening to Beatles: One and got "Hey Jude" stuck in my head. (The internet is replete with theories on what that song means, but really I guess it doesn't matter right now since this post is about something else.)

Thinking over the line "well you know that it's a fool / who plays it cool / by making his world a little colder," I started to think about the importance of being passionate about things that are passion-worthy and not "playing it cool" with things that matter.

Maybe that's ambiguous.

Here are some ingredients in my mental marinade:

• The stories of the early Christians in Acts, giving their alls for Christ seemingly without a second thought (the consequences of acting on second thoughts it pretty dramatically illustrated by the story of Ananias and Sapphira). It was all or nothing in the Acts church. Is it that they didn't have the luxury (maybe more of curse?) we have of so easily blending into our surrounding culture? Or that, even though they could've, they were so passionate they chose not to?
• This challenge from John Piper. How do I act when I am really excited about something? How do people who are "in love" act and talk? Is my "passion for Christ" something that I write about on paper, or something that is apparent in my actions and in the words I speak?
• The powerful devotion of adherents to radical Islam (and the incredible growth of Islam all over the world). Wrong? Yeah. Devoted? Yeah, that too. Christ isn't calling us to the death of a suicide bomber when he says "come and die," but that somehow doesn't keep us from coming up with excuses to follow.
• The total inanity of the church as perceived by Western culture. Some of us were having a conversation recently about the meaning and usage of the word "lame." Well, the church is perceived as lame in the literal sense that it's a cripple, and lame in the vernacular sense that it's dumb and boring. And that's because cultural Christianity isn't about passion for Christ at all.

I'm convinced that our generation has a dramatic choice to make between all-out crazy boundless uninhibited devotion to Christ or living in active rebellion to His call. I don't think that, given the cultural threats to the Western church, we'll have the option of having "regular" American-dream-9-5-job-lives where we can go to church on Sundays and try to be a good witness in the workplace and go to Bible study on Wednesday nights and call it good. We need to GO to carry the Gospel to new places, or to have such an attitude of GO in our lives at home that we are committed to make no compromises, to lose all respect in the eyes of others, and to stand unabashedly for the truth of His Word in words and deeds.

That's what it will take to show those around us that the God we serve really is worth living -- and dying -- for.

A lesser god wouldn't be worthy of our worship, devotion, or service in the first place.