disinnovating

My lovely wife bought me a pair of shoes – if shoes they may be called – for my birthday. Said shoes bear a striking resemblance to pool shoes, only they have toes and a hard-as-nails sole. These shoes are stripped down to the bare minimum of what we need to protect our feet. The idea is that we were made to walk, run, and jump barefoot, and if we wear shoes, they must not interfere with our natural bio-mechanics. Over the years, shoes have “evolved” to meet the fluid needs of fashion or fitness fads. Most shoes have been “innovated” to a point of hazard to our body. Time to disinnovate.

At this point, you must be thinking, “Why am I reading this? If I want to read about shoes, why not just visit A Day in the Life?” Before you abandon this post as a lost cause, let me warn you that this post is not actually about shoes. I promise.

In some ways, our spiritual life is best nurtured by a minimal message. Like footwear, the simple message of Christianity has been innovated into something that is more hazardous than helpful. No, I am not going all namby-pamby emergent. I am not saying that the church is useless or that the Gospel is irrelevant. To the contrary, I am saying that the Gospel is the only message that will always be relevant. The moment we take the message of the cross and add our own pop psychology or marketing fads is the moment we detract from the powerful beauty of the message we seek to innovate.

Somehow I think that we miss the fact that Jesus’ first message was simply, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 4.17). Throughout Christ’s ministry, the meat of what he taught was this: repent and believe. The Gospel demands that we repent and believe and promises grace and peace. Sure there is more to Christianity than this. Yet this “Mere Christianity,” as Lewis called it, is the salve to our broken souls. It is the “power of God for salvation to those who believe” (Rom. 1.16).

At this point, I want to make a critical distinction. We can (and must) pursue a deeper understanding of all of Scripture. Saying that we don’t need to study God’s Word if only we have the Gospel is a cop-out. It is like saying that you don’t need to get to know your spouse after you get married. We cannot profess to love God and resolve to know nothing about Him. Yet, we cannot add our own “spin” to the Gospel. The more we dress it up to be acceptable to our culture, to fill pews, to comfort people, the less it resembles the Christian message. The more of our own “power” we try to add, the more we emasculate it. Time to disinnovate.

We will find that the more we are faithful to preach the holy, awesome, offensive Good News, the more we will see genuine conversions to Christ. There may be fewer people in our churches, but they will be true converts. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel [alone], for it [alone] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1.16).