THE COSTS OF NONDISCIPLESHIP - If a church spends most of its time on vessels, those who regularly attend will not progress in spiritual formation. These vessel matters do not bring anyone into Christlikeness.
In fact, standing on these things as important or essential is what produces mean and angry Christians. They have failed to aim toward becoming people who have the character of Christ. Such righteous meanness among Christians is a common point of commiseration among Christian leaders.
A denominational leader recently asked me, “Why are Christians so mean?” The answer is that Christians are taught by word and example that it is more important to be right (in terms of their vessel or practice) than it is to be Christlike. Being right licenses a person to be mean—righteously mean, of course.
Now I must say something you can be mad at me about. A fundamental mistake of the conservative side of much of the Western church is that its basic goal is to get people into heaven rather than to get heaven into people. This creates groups of people who may be ready to die but clearly are not ready to live.
They rarely can get along with one another, much less with those “outside.” Often their most intimate relations are tangles of reciprocal harm, coldness, and resentment—righteous meanness. They have become “Christian” without being Christlike.
The way to get as many people into heaven as you can is to get heaven into as many people as you can—that is, to follow the path of genuine spiritual transformation or full-throttle discipleship to Jesus Christ. When we are counting results, we need to remember the many people (surrounded by churches) who will not be in heaven because they have never, to their knowledge, seen the reality of Christ in a living human being. These lives of the “converted” testify against the reality of “the life that is life indeed” (1 Timothy 6:19, PAR).
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