This question is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian – a disciple of Jesus. If we calls ourselves ‘Christian’ it’s the question that should remain with us for life, constantly challenging us and shaping us, but also affirming us. In light of the stuff Jesus said on the matter, how should we answer the question?

I have a friend who has just started reading David Platt’s book, Radical. I’m not overly familiar with the book or Platt but have done some digging to deal with the questions of my friend. My friend is a bit concerned, understandably, about the fact that, by their reckoning, Platt takes the words of Jesus very literally, specifically looking at Luke 9:60 (“let the dead bury the dead”) where Jesus seems to discourage someone from going to bury their father, plus the well known passage about the rich young man needing to sell all his possessions.

From what I understand about Platt, he seems to be in the same vein as people like Shane Claiborne and in another sense, Francis Chan. What I like about these guys is their desire to challenge some sacred cows and in their context, call into question the appropriateness of devotion to the American dream in the lives of people who desire to follow Jesus. Health, upward mobility, wealth, prosperity, freedom and comfort are not just the American dream though, it’s largely the dream of the West so it applies just as well to people in my homeland of New Zealand.

To ‘get it’ we’ve got to look at what Jesus was doing when he said such things. There’s a method of teaching he employed that he used time and time again. It can be captured in the phrase ‘cultural deconstruction’ –  he created a sense of discomfort and dissonance. He took cultural sacred cows and destroyed them and he did it by using harsh language to really drive his point home. Some of those examples we read with little more than a glance, such as his challenges to understandings of the Sabbath, we also don’t give much of a second thought to his pronouncement that we’re supposed to eat his flesh and drink his blood – think about how radical that was to an audience who thought that consuming the blood of an animal was a grave sin… no medium/rare steak for them.

Jesus did it time and time again – don’t bury your father, sell all your possessions, hate your father and mother, eat my flesh and drink my blood… on and on and on. He never let up on this stuff and when people seemed to be offended, rather than letting them off by telling them it was only metaphor or allegory, he’d drive it even harder, causing people to walk away, often angry. We could find ways to interpret the text by looking at cultural context to soften the blow for ourselves, but he wasn’t trying to be soft so that would defeat the purpose somewhat.

Luke 9:23-25 captures the point of it all:

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?”

The point is simple but the application is not – there should not be anything at all that stands between us and God no matter how well we think we can justify it and how sacred it might feel. We cannot serve two masters… and we’re all going to serve something. The cultures we are immersed in will continually present things to submit ourselves to (including people) and so often we chase those things as something separate from our faith. The challenge is to bring it in line with following Jesus, serving that end, or do away with it. We can’t serve the Western dream and Jesus. Either the things of our culture are serving Him or our understanding of Him is simply a layer in the pursuit of our cultural idols. In Jesus’ time the law had become that cultural idol and he slaughtered it in his teaching because it stood between the people and real devotion to God. The trick is, he wasn’t doing it simply to serve his own ego or some misguided idea that God is self centered and wants a bunch of minions to stroke his pride by being devoted to him. He wants us to truly grasp life as it’s meant to be.

There’s a paradox here – when we lay everything down, we gain so much more. “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” Let me give you an example – my family. In our culture and many others (including in Jesus’ time) family comes first. In Jesus’ time that was most clearly held up in the honour that should be bestowed on the mother and father. Jesus dealt to that in one swoop. It makes sense to say that my wife and daughter are the most important things to me but Jesus challenges that cultural approach in Luke 14:25-34. What he’s challenging is placing them before him – making an idol of them. If I do such a thing then our relationship can never truly be healthy. By truly devoting myself to him and it is real devotion he’s pushing for, I gain something better with them. By doing it I can approach them in a truly healthy manner and do what’s best for them. He’s saying there can be no other master in our lives but by really grasping that, we get life as it’s meant to be – not easy, but good and whole.

In practical terms it works out for me in a very simple way. When I’m really giving time in prayer, silence and devotion to God at the beginning of each day my relationship with my wife and daughter flows better – I’m a better husband and father because I’ve removed other barriers and given myself first and foremost to God. Everything is put into perspective. When I neglect to do it I can be a bit of a prick. By putting God before them, they get a better version of me. When I tie myself up in knots trying to work out how to best serve them without giving myself to God, I get into an awful space. It may not work out like that for everyone, but it’s how it works for me.

For me it also feeds my work at TEAR Fund and above that, my service as an ordained Minister.

So do you have to refrain from burying your parents and do you have to sell all your possessions and give the proceeds to the poor? Maybe, but maybe not… but don’t let the ‘maybe not’ lessen the challenge. The question is – what does it mean for you to have no other master in your life but Jesus? What does it mean to make all other things submit to that life and its purposes? Sometimes it will mean giving it up, other times it will mean approaching it differently and at other times it will just mean an internal shift in motivation and how we view certain things. Sometimes the response will mean some radical adjustments and other times it will simply mean drawing God into the mundane of our everyday lives and submitting to Him in that. Brother Lawrence discovered the beauty of it in simply working in the kitchen of a monastery. Many people find it in how they approach the work they do or how they raise their children.

Also, trust that as we draw near to him, he’ll challenge some of those things himself and make them known to us in various ways so we don’t need to beat ourselves up over it, we just need to be open to the challenges and moving towards what He is drawing us into. The more we place him first, the more open we are to the sense of being drawn forward.

In reorientating our lives to this end, service to Christ, living the Gospel and participating in his Kingdom in ALL that we do, we face something that will break us down, challenge us, reshape us, draw us to the hard work of discipleship, but give us something much richer and deeper in the process.

It’s a heck of a journey.