Part 1 of 3: What is a successful life?
An essay on life, faith, and why I almost abandoned Christianity.

Part 1: What does it mean to be a follower of Christ?

"You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!"
~The words of Jesus from John 5:39 (NLT)

As I have grown spiritually, I have come to one solid conclusion. The phrase “God’s grace” is one of the most popular phrases in Christian circles, and yet it is arguably the least understood. I discuss some of the reasons for this later in this three-part essay. The message of God’s grace represents the very heart of the Gospel and the essence of being a follower of Christ, so understanding what it means is essential. On the other hand, to negate this message is not only to pervert the Gospel but to also quench the love that flows from Jesus. I know how hard it is to sometimes grasp this message of God's grace, because even though I have been a child of God for over 20 years, I has just been in the past few years that I have started to slowly grasp this message. It has taken brokenness, God's spirit, my immediate family, friends, and the help of many of my brothers and sisters at my home church, Cascade Hills, which is led by Bill Purvis.

Naturally, whenever you start talking too much about God’s grace, there are always some religious skeptics who think that you are just doing so to find a license for sin or an excuse for disobedience, but this is a very naive understanding of the subject. This essay traces my journey of how I became such an ardent defender of this often-misunderstood subject and fell in love with Jesus all over again. My target “audience” for this three part essay is ministers and people like me who have been broken, bruised and battered by this thing called life, or for anyone who may have been tormented by the anguish of mental despair, and religion (even the “Christian” kind). I hope and pray that as you read this, you Christmas holiday season will be filled with an awareness of God's love for you. I don't get caught up in the hype of the co-called "war on Christmas" that some cultural critics are worried about. Christmas lost its true meaning way before corporations started saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas"; Christmas has more or less become a secular holiday celebrating commercialism. Even people who don't believe in Jesus celebrate Christmas, so fretting about what term people use to describe this holiday season should be the least of our worries.

Introduction
A few years ago, I was burned out spiritually: Christianity as I understood it was not working for me and I was in so much despair from trying to get it to work, that I seriously thought about abandoning the faith altogether. Yes, on the surface, the casual observer may have said, “well, Stephen, your problems are probably as a result of you not being dedicated enough to God, you need to follow the spiritual disciplines, apply your faith and give thanks in all things, this is only a test!” And early in my Christian walk, I probably would have agreed with this sentiment, but after years of trying my best to be the good Christian, and slaving at the alter of spiritual disciplines and professed love for God in the attempt to get what I called the Christian life to work for me, I had not only gotten weary, but was also at the point where I was almost beginning to resent ‘God’. I would soon realize that it was not God or Jesus that I really resented– the truth is that my faith in Jesus is stronger now than it was over 20 years ago when I accepted Him into my life – my problem was with the god of religion and this religious brand that has been made out of being a follower of Jesus. This religion, which we disguise as Christianity is as addictive and enslaving as any habit forming substance that you can inject or smoke. Unfortunately, this religion that disguises itself as Christianity is very enticing and appealing because it follows the essential principles of our world, which imply that we live in a pure meritocracy based on the Law of Linearity which we apply in almost every facet of our lives (more on this law later on).

During this rare moment of serious reflection and introspection, while I contemplated what direction my life would go spiritually, I had to ask myself one very serious question “what does it really mean to be a Christian or a follower of Jesus?” I discovered that what I was calling Christianity was nothing more than a pseudo-form of the faith based on popular religious and legalistic practices. It is my humble belief that much of what we call Christianity is nothing more than a legalistic practice where we compare “performance score cards” (and demonize those who we feel are not getting it right) as opposed to being a haven of authentic spirituality and God’s love. It is for this reason that I believe that we have perverted the Gospel of God’s love and grace and are known more for our legalistic stance on the issues, instead of the love that is supposed to be our trademark. By embracing self-righteousness, which religion inevitably forces you to do, we are too busy comparing ourselves with each other, seeing who is obeying the right rules under the right belief system (and the belief system or doctrine changes based he specific brand of religion and denomination). By so doing, we end up deceiving ourselves into thinking that we are actually impressing God with our good deeds, while we simultaneously criticize the “world” or others who are not in our fold for not getting their act together. I know what it is like to be so infected with this kind of insidious pride, so much so that I couldn’t even see it, as you cannot see the forest from the trees. What broke me down however, was the sudden realization that the formulaic brand of “Christianity” which most of us professed Christ-followers ascribe to just does not work. You know, the brand that says the Bible is simply an instruction book for life, which if properly followed will give you guarantees results. We have even cleverly come up with an acronym for the Bible to back this claim: B.I.B.L.E translated to mean, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Sounds cute, but is it spiritually accurate? This brand of “Christianity” basically goes by the following rule: if you obey God, you get blessed and inherit heaven; if you disobey God, you get cursed and eventually go to hell. Dr. Larry Crabb, an acclaimed Christian author and psychologist calls this the “Law of Linearity”, and the sad part is that most of us really think that this is what the Christian life is all about; Yes, you will find Scriptures scattered throughout the Bible which seem to support this law and purport that this is all that the “Christian life” is all about, but this is a law based on an agreement that has been deemed null and void after the cross. Reading the Gospels and teachings of Jesus and the New agreement that we have with God, I am now convinced that we have often misunderstood what being a follower of Jesus really means. What ends up happening with this popular brand of “Christianity”, however, is that in order to foster the illusion of obedience to Biblical Law, we lower the standards of the Law by cherry-picking laws out of the Bible to suit our own agenda. In doing so, we not only minimize the seriousness of Biblical Law, but we also negate the message of God’s grace. Oh, we talk a good game when it comes to God’s grace and we all have our arsenal of Scriptures to say that we are saved by grace and not by works, but when it comes to the practical reality of our lives, you will generally find out that we refute our claims. We think that grace applies to becoming a child of God alone, as opposed to the reality of our everyday lives.

When we talk about “obeying God”, what we mostly are referring to is really using God as a means to an end. So we adhere to what Dr. Larry Crabb calls the Law of Linearity where we obey the appropriate law for whatever blessing we want. The crux of this law is simple, it is the message of the Old Covenant which basically states that if you want a certain blessing (we’ll call the blessing “B”) follow the appropriate law to get this blessing (call the law “A”): Want obedient and responsible kids? Then discipline them appropriately and give them the appropriate dosage of “tough love” without smothering them; don't spare the rod. Want financial success in you life? Then follow all the principles of tithing and become good steward that God wants you to be. Want success in your marriage? Then follow the laws of communication, listening, being a loving spouse and success is guaranteed; Wives, don’t forget to submit to your husbands. You get the drift, follow the necessary laws, and success is guaranteed in that area of your life. There is nothing inherently wrong with these laws, but there is much wrong with the illusion that we can keep them or that "success" in those ares of our lives is guaranteed if we follow them. What happens when we don’t get the results that we hope for from our attempts to obey these laws? What happens to the God-loving family who ends up with an addicted son? The dynamic and respected preacher who ends up with a pregnant daughter? The God-fearing family who loses a two year old child to a terminal illness? The astute and servant-leadership businessman who loses his life’s savings in a corporate embezzlement scandal that he had no idea was going on? The bottom line is that life does not always turn out the way we went it to, even when we follow all the right principles. Following the Law of Linearity, a modern form of the Old Covenant will always lead to frustration and self-deception. But in our obsession to get positive results and to “prove to the world that having Jesus in our lives really works”, we often lie about the reality of our lives because we are trying to market God to win converts. God becomes no more than a catalyst for the “successful lives” that we desire, and if we are to be totally honest with ourselves, most of us idolize this notion of “success” much more than we do God. When we follow this path, this Law of Linearity, we don’t end up really end up worshipping God, but adoring what He can do for us.

We will never fully accept the message of God’s grace as long as we believe that we can really obey Biblical law. Unfortunately, we often have put the cart before the horse when it comes to “law” and “grace”. We often preach grace and love to get people to accept Jesus, and then once they have done that, we preach law and legalism to get them to obey God. But the Law can only do one thing – Biblical law can only show you your inability to keep it and the infinitely large gap between our performance and God’s standard. In today’s politically charged society we use terms like “liberal”, “secular-progressive”, “heathens”, “atheists”, and the like to label people as those who don’t measure up or believe as we do. It makes us feel better about ourselves as if God is fooled by our shenanigans since we have found people who are not as “obedient as we are”. And while most of us would agree that we still have a long way to go compared to some examples of altruism like Billy Graham, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mother Theresa, they are not the standard either. From a Biblical standpoint, the “worst of sinners” and the “most righteous” of human beings are still light years away from coming close to God’s Holy standard. This is what the Bible means when it says we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.

The difference between religion and true spirituality in-Jesus is so glaring once you get down to it, but this is often very difficult to see on the surface because we live in a world that is conducive to the promotion of religious agendas. Religion is more concerned with image; spirituality is concerned with the soul and touching hearts with love. Religion elevates self-righteousness, spirituality keeps us humble; religion perpetuates the illusion that it is possible to obey Biblical law, while spirituality makes you realize that we are all products of God’s grace; religion is the ultimate tool for manipulation and control, spirituality is about true freedom and love; religion is focused primarily on rules, spirituality is focused on relationships; religion places self and its accomplishments as god, spirituality focuses on Jesus. I once read a very poignant quote from an anonymous writer which said that "religion if for people who are scared of going to hell, spirituality of for people who have already been there." Only a person who has been ravaged by the tyranny of addiction or the futility of trying to get life to work by Law could exude that kind of authenticity.

If I had not gotten to the point of utter desperation, I will not have started to learn how to genuinely grasp to the message of Gods grace and live from a paradigm of love instead of fear. Like many Christians, I had been professing this message of “grace” for years, but deep down inside, I negated and rejected this message, because like most of us, I realized that we live in a worldly of assumed meritocracy, where people get what they deserve, nothing more and nothing less. But God's grace blows this myth up into pieces and that is why it is easy to accept in principle, but putting it into practice is something else altogether. When someone else hurts us, we want them to receive justice (code for “punishment”) but when we hurt someone else, we want to receive grace and forgiveness. Grace is only appealing to us as long as we alone are the recipients. For everyone else, we want them to earn their due through blood sweat and tears. We naturally assume that God blesses “good” people and curses “bad” people, but when you realize that no one is really good (at least not based on the Bible’s standards) you start to understand why we need grace as much as we do. Remember when a gentleman came up to Jesus calling Him “Good teacher” and Jesus made it clear to the man that no one is good except God, the point being that God’s definition of good is totally different from ours (see Matthew 19:16 & 17). This is not to say that there are no good people by our human standards, but let us not confuse this “goodness” with being righteous in-Christ, these are two totally different things and understanding this makes the difference between being self-righteous and being humble.

Coming in April : part 2 of 3: "making sense of suffering"


Stephen O. Akinduro

Hip-Hop culture, the perpetual scapegoat!

I would like to take a few minutes to discuss something that I believe to be of serious significance. Excuse me for being verbose and long winded..I have been watching the coverage of the recent shooting death of 24 year old Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor and I must tell you that I am utterly disgusted at the sheer bias with which this story is being covered. The man is not even in the ground yet, and all types of stereotypical assumptions are being made about his death; they say that he lived a reckless lifestyle, his past came back to haunt him, he hung out with the wrong crowd. Excuse me!! The last time I checked, the investigation had just started and all we know is that while he was at home resting with his girlfriend and 18 month old daughter, and intruder came in, and shot him in the leg, and he ended up dying from excessive bleeding. But this is not enough for the media. Another black man is dead before the age of 25 (homicide is still one of the leading causes of death for young black men, about 6 times the rate for whites) and all the media has time to do is blame the victim and hip-hop culture. All interviews I have seen thus far from concerned family, teammates and friends say that Sean was an outstanding citizen, who, even though he had a few run-ins with the law at a young age, was on the right track. Is no man entitled to mistakes in life anymore? One close friend, who now plays with the Arizona Cardinals, noted that Sean had some enemies who were jealous of his success, and it could have been those people who orchestrated his death, but added that Sean was an outstanding person. Even actor Andy Garcia (of "The Godfather"), whose niece, Jackie, was Sean’s girlfriend, hailed Sean as a hero for getting making sure his girlfriend and daughter were well hidden before he faced the intruders.

So you can only imagine my disgust when I saw Bill O’Reilly last night in his blame-hip-hop-culture-for-all-the-ills-of-black-men mode last night, desperately trying to somehow connect Sean Taylor's death to a shady past that supposedly came back to haunt him. Even though the investigation is yet to substantiate these claims, conservative commentators would just love to use this as another excellent opportunity to bash hip-hop culture (a culture that they, quite frankly, do not understand, even though their kids probably do). Why is it that every time something negative happens in the black community these days, either hip-hop or the victim themselves must be put on blast? And why is it that all of a sudden Bill Cosby has become the hero of the conservative movement, simply because he has published a book (titled “Come on people”) and going on “call out” tours admonishing blacks to take responsibility for their lives. Nothing against Bill Cosby, because I have read the book and he makes some excellent points, but he is not saying anything that we have not heard before. Go to any black church or practically any responsible black family, and you will hear the ethics of hard work and personal responsibility that have been preached for decades.

I was watching the Republican YouTube Debate last night, and a question was asked by a black father and son about what the candidates would do to help lower the rate of black-on-black violence that is plaguing our urban cities (especially in cities like Philly where they have had a huge number of homicides this year) and then Mitt Romney goes on and on about how the huge rate of kids out of wedlock and how not having black men in the household is the primary reason for this problem, and of course, you know he had to give kudos to Bill Cosby for championing this message of personal responsibility. Oh, really, as if to imply that if there are simply two parents in the home, that would automatically end violence in the streets, even if the relationship between those parents is volatile. Conservatives act like Bill Cosby is the first black person alive to wake up and realize that we have a crisis in black America (and America period) that requires a substantial amount of personal responsibility. I have been hearing what Bill Cosby is preaching since I was able to comprehend the spoken word, so it is nothing new there.

Sean Taylor came from a middle class background, his dad is a police chief, and regardless of people’s disdain for the hip-hop culture, he is the victim here. He was taking care of his family, was an all-pro safety in the NFL (one of the hardest jobs to get) and was on track to having another all pro season. We as a country need to stop demonizing young black men especially just because we know little about their culture and may not like it or approve of it. I am not justifying bad behavior where it exists, but demonizing a whole culture simply because you don’t understand it or like it is unnecessary.

Yes, there is a crisis in black families, but personal responsibility, while very important, cannot address some of the larger societal issues that we don’t like to face. Lack of adequate health care, the turning of our prison system into large mental health care hospitals, the fact that blacks make up a disproportionate amount of prisoners in this country (the U.S. has the largest prison population of any industrialized nation in the world, and most of the prisoners are black or brown), the falling wages in our community..these are just a few of the issues that seem to affect black people at a disproportionally higher rate. About 40 years ago, GM was the largest employer in the US, with an average wage, adjusted for inflation of about $48,000. Today, Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the country and the average wage is about $19,000. Which family do you know of can survive off of that kind of money? During this Bush Administration, I have had more immediate and extended family lose their corporate jobs to outsourcing than during the previous 8 years, but I keep hearing how well the economy is doing. We have a situation in this country now where fewer and fewer corporate conglomerates own most of the wealth. Does personal responsibility alone solve all of these problems?

When I was younger, I used to buy the illusion that all it takes to “make it” in this self-proclaimed “greatest country on earth” is hard work, study, higher education and personal responsibility, then I entered the real world I realized that these factors alone are not enough and there are forces much larger than you and I which seek to keep you addicted to dependence on them to make it. Then God help you if you have mental or physical health issues or you get caught up in our highly biased judicial system, who is going to help you then? Where will you get the help when you don’t have the financial resources to get the best help available?

The Bush Administration came into office with the mantra “compassionate conservatism” Now, I realize that their brand of Christianity is self-righteous and consists of a lot of conservatism, but very little compassion, and it has been reflected not only in our foreign policy (war in Iraq) but also domestically, in how we treat those who are marginalized, poor or do not fit the status-quo of middle class white America. God help us all if we get 4 to 8 more years of this type of leadership.

Stephen O. Akinduro