Mar | 14 | The Lion & The Middle Class Dentist

Key Word:- BECOME


Title:- The Lion & The Middle Class Dentist

Luke 14:21-24 Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, 'Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.' And the servant said, 'Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.' Then the master said to the servant, 'Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.'"

‘Casting Crowns’ may be a Christian band originating from what some people have called ‘America’s Open Air Asylum’ i.e. South Florida, but I tell you, though they may be not ‘out of their minds on Mogadon,’ their songs are really out of this world.

In particular I make reference to a truly prophetic little number written by Mark Hall entitled: ‘If we are the body.’ It is essentially a challenge to the church to be impartial in it’s choice of pointed proclamation in the turning from its focus on the prosperous suburbs back to the comparatively poorer inner cities? Maybe? Whatever conclusions you personally draw from the totality of the lyrical admonition, you will surely be arrested by the haunting truth of this single line : ‘Jesus paid much too high a price for us to pick and choose who should come.’ Selah. Think about that.

If I might define the middle class, as those whose professional acumen, has led them to a cultural respectability, with more than a reasonable financial and moderate relational stability, then I must say that over the years it has been my observation that the church in the Western hemisphere, has had a tendency to gravitate towards this middle class, middle of the road, somewhat settled statement and state of affairs and is now (with some exceptions) almost totally involved in mostly managing and reaching its own middle class. I am not saying it is right or wrong, but simply saying, “Hey! There it is!” The middle and professional classes seem to have become the destination of our discipleship and this is especially true for second generation Christians born of working class families.

I wonder if even the previously goateed vanguards of the emergent church are now, even as I write, ascending the not too steep, south face of middle class Christianity, toting their 2.4 children and SUV on their no longer baby backed ribs? The babies have come and are growing up and soon the punctured piercings will be removed and the tattoos covered, well those that can be, and the settled safety of the suburbs shall call them with their offspring out of the buzzing danger of the inner city, and their inner man, more mature now, will say “amen, ah yes, it is time; we have at last grown up,” and all this shall happen whilst the new and latest emergent, bemoans this new generations desertion of their call from the trenches with books entitled ‘Exchanging the Somme for settled Suburbia’ or ‘Where have all the goatees gone?’ Each generation gravitates toards the middle classes. Children will do that to you!

The truth is that Christianity in every generation has gravitated towards the middle ground of the respectable middle class. I wonder if as the Gospel improves people and somewhat levels out inequalities, that it leads to a strange semi-arrived comfort that gently removes the teeth of the Lion of Judah by re-interpreting the sacrificial demands of Jesus? If so, then surely such a nice pussycat of a re-interpeted Jesus, will always lead us to the middle ground and so give birth to the suburban gospel of grace and goods, for after all, I could sacrifice my life then, kind of, when it was but me, but now I have a wife and children and an S.U.V., you know, car payments and a mortgage, then I must be that much more mature. God would want nothing less of me than wisdom and maturity. So, let’s make sure the church is the most safest and sanitised place on the planet, especially for our dearest little children.

The danger of this settled social station, this polite little poisonous prison, is pure protectionism. Protection of what we’ve got; our place, our community, our stuff, our pension and as I have stated, most importantly, our dearest little children. In turn, such a protective mind set, will automatically become partial, I mean without thought or contemplation, it will become partial, and the poor will know it and despite our best efforts, they shall be repulsed by such professional partiality and all shall feel it in their spirits just as sure as we would, if we tried to push together the identical poles of magnets.

The past answered this problem with separate pews and even separate churches, one for the powerful and one for the poor, one for the protected and one for the unprotected. What will be the answer of this generation? For make no mistake about it, the forces of social improvement in our society are so all pervasive that we cannot help but produce a material mind set, a separate protectiveness.

In my current sojourn on this planet, I have not yet witnessed a force powerful enough to break the protectionism of the middle aged and middle class. I have yet to see the “different disciple” appear on the scene (and buy the way, quite frankly, I am just so sick of singing about it) who live consistently and continually for something more than this “overall betterment of a families, condition and position” which the Gospel always becomes.

Methinks that only the changing of the times will bring forth Biblical disciples, and for that to happen maybe a catastrophe of Biblical proportion will be needed to break the powerful protective forces of the present social orders. Yes, maybe end time disciples will only be seen when the time of the end is upon us? I think so.

Tell me friend, what do you aspire to today? Where are you laying up your treasure? What are you teaching your children in the way you live so protectively? What do they aspire to? Biblical discipleship or dentistry, you know, taking the teeth out of the Lion?

Listen:- He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 10:37-39 KJV 

Pray: Lord, outrageous God, teach me to live an abandoned life of no reserves, no retreats and no regrets.