Thoughts on the Cost

As our Honda mini-van weaves around the intricate patchwork of winding suburban streets and avenues, my eyes wander all around the neighborhood. Each house is an exact replica of the one next to it. It’s almost as if somebody hit copy and paste a thousand times. All the fake brick sidewalks and stucco walls and pseudo-barn doors make for quite the ‘parade of homes.’ The streets are perfectly clean and the yards perfectly cut. There are no leaves on the ground, because there are no trees. This is the kind of neighborhood that I dread. We pull up in the drive way of our friends’ home, and I realize that even they have bought in. As I walk into their outrageously enormous ‘home’, I see a TV screen that covers a whole wall, a ping-pong table room, and further in lies the ‘living space’ with rounded drywall corners and yuppie home décor. Untouched candles and recessed lighting are just a few of my frustrations. Not to mention the massive faux rustic clock sitting on top of the mantel above the gas fireplace. Tile counters, floors and even walls are adorned with even more useless trinkets and gadgets, which contrast with the maroon accent wall in the kitchen. This intricate piece of suburban normality becomes an itch in my brain, pleading to be scratched, in the form of the very page you are reading. I begin to wonder things that my mom would strangle me for saying. Like, “This neighborhood is the most horribly normal place I have ever been!” “Is there any authenticity here, or is it just the superficial paranoia of a privileged white society too scared to get out and into the ghetto and help their ‘brothas’ in Christ out?”
“This is the suburbs, where it is all white and safe and happy!” “I would be grateful if a volcano somehow came out of the ground and swallowed this whole materialistic neighborhood!”
After travelling in the car for seven hours with your six person family, you have to find things to do to entertain yourself, such as reading over 200 pages of Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution. After hearing him speak of the true cost of discipleship, about the biblical ideals for faith and community, and about Christ’s call to feed the poor and visit the lonely, I find this suburban ‘Christian’ home to be in stark contrast with the Biblical ideals put forth by this ordinary Christian radical. But then I realize something: the reason that Shane and others like him, such as Bonheoffer and Francis of Assisi, are so radical is because of people like these suburbanites! Shane calls us to give up the ‘Christian’ notion that faith only serves to sanctify the individual and then live comfortably, and to embrace the idea that the church is more than just multi-million dollar buildings on hills above comfortable suburban communities. In Bonheoffer’s The Cost of Discipleship, he discusses and verifies the ideas of ‘radicals’ like Claiborne. Bonheoffer’s idea for the believer is completely and infinitely pervading self-renouncing faith, not just a change to our moral conduct, and to take an oath of self-alignment with the life and person of Jesus Christ. Self-renouncing faith? What a concept…What does it mean to totally renounce yourself for Christ? This is something that I am just beginning to explore. But I cannot blame the suburbanites for their comfort. That would be utter hypocrisy. While my eyes may have been surveying the scene set earlier, my mind is set on self examination. What have I bought into? How can I accuse people of not grasping self-renouncing faith whole-heartedly when I myself cannot even do so? I sit comfortably in the warm mini van with my Adidas shorts and my Eddie Bauer Shirt and my Nike shoes. Thinking back to the massive amount of unused clothing just sitting around my dorm room, I realize how ridiculous it is just to let it all sit in my drawer while there is definitely somebody somewhere naked who would love to wear some of it. Sure, it’s nice to have some variety in our wardrobe, but I was so blind to my own actions. I have complete excess! There are shirts and shorts and all kinds of other things sitting in my drawer that I will never ever wear. What do I do now? What would Jesus do?
Driving through the neighborhood was a deeply disturbing experience for me. In my devotions lately I have been reading through Philippians. One day I got to Philippians 1:27 and it reads somewhat like this, “Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ…” I sat back, thought for a second, and then asked myself this question: What is the Gospel of Christ?
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After pondering this for a few minutes, I came up with multiple AWANA verses that explained faith and grace and whatnot…But what I really wanted to know was this: What does it mean to conduct ourselves according to the Gospel of Christ?
What the heck does that mean?!?!?
Have I ever actually seen someone do that? I began to frantically search the scriptures, only to find that the gospels told me everything that I had never heard of in my suburban evangelical community: peacemaking, social justice, loving my neighbor, Christ’s heart for the poor, and so on and so forth…
What does it look like to ‘conduct ourselves according to the gospel of Christ?’
I am beginning to see what others have discovered in their search for the answer to this simple question. They have discovered that their self-renouncing faith screams at them to renounce not just their sin patterns, but their lifestyles! Lifestyle means place, culture (attitudes), possessions, social groups, and religious and political interactions and practices. They see that aligning their lifestyles with Christ means more than just living comfortably and not sinning. It means complete devotion to Jesus Christ, no matter what the cost.
What does this look like?
I am still trying to figure that one out.
As I began to make some of these realizations, I felt this easing sense of liberation. The gospel became alive to me, and that was very liberating. As it should be according to the passage of scripture that says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Even though life may not always be easy when we are wear the yoke of Christ, we can be at ease knowing that He is sovereign and that we are trying to follow His will according to the gospel.

I am just trying to find the Way.