Seasons change.
“Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:6-9
Well, have you noticed? The seasons are changing. Surely, you must’ve noticed by now. After all, there are more than a few clues out there.
For a long time, western Christianity has enjoyed a way of life that was familiar, comfortable, and relatively easy. Ever since the 4thcentury, when Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be not only legal, but the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire, the way of the Christian has been neatly laid out, clearly marked, and very well-traveled. In the western world, Christianity has enjoyed great success and wild popularity. For hundreds and hundreds of years, Christians who might have lost their way needed only to follow their Christian neighbors to get back on track. Christians assumed that the way of the ostensibly Christian culture was the same as the way of Jesus.
But seasons change.
The culture also changes. The culture that Christians once depended upon to tell them what it meant to be a Christian is now preaching a very different way of life. In our culture, faith is a private affair – Jesus is, at best, a personal choice no better or worse than any other choice. This means that Christians who are intent on living and preaching the full counsel of God are often seen as obscurantists and obstructionists. Portrayed as judgmental and intolerant, they are dismissed as out of touch, archaic, reactionary, and largely irrelevant.
And it’s not just debatable or marginal parts of Christian teaching that cause the trouble. You don’t have to insist on a young earth to be rejected, simply assert that Jesus is the only way of salvation and you’ve earned the title of hate-monger. And it’s not just the intellectual or cultural elites who hold such negative attitudes toward believers. It is the dominant view among great swaths of ordinary Americans. In our country, today, the way of life that has the loudest voice and most pilgrims is the way of non-Christians who are ready to affirm multiple avenues of truth and who cherish individual identity, personal integrity, and autonomous expression as the highest and most sacred ideals. Divine absolutes, eternally true and springing from God’s will are rejected as passé. Today, unbelievers are paving the way into the world of tomorrow.
How are you handling the rising unpopularity of the Christian way of life? Maybe you are militant, maybe you are mournful, maybe you resigning yourself to the way of the world because that seems like the only option left at this point. At one time, being a Christian may have been an easy, instinctual routine – as common sense as getting dressed in the morning – but seasons change. Auto-pilot won’t cut it. Not today. Today you have to think carefully about what you are going to do with yourself in this world in which we live – today you have to think about the way you are going to go.
When it comes down to it, you have only two options – two ways to choose from. At least, that’s what Isaiah says. “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to Yahweh, that Yahweh may have compassion on him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are nor your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.” In God’s estimation, there is His way, and then there is your way. There is God’s way, and there is the way of the world. So which is it? Which way will you go?
The fact that you are reading this makes me think that you might answer this question with a resounding – “I will go God’s way!” That’s good. But which way is that? Maybe the change of the seasons has you lost and looking for direction. Maybe the state of the world has turned your world upside down – and you’re not even too sure anymore what it means to live life God’s way. What is His way? What would he have me do?
I often ask myself that very question. When I am looking at the ways spread out before me, wondering what it means to return to the Lord, to walk in His way, I think back to a trip I took in 2019. That summer, I spent a few weeks traveling with a group of people like myself who were studying for careers - some in religion, some in medicine. We were traveling around Germany and Poland, learning about the roles that our respective professions had played in Germany during the rise and rule of the Third Reich. We learned hard truths about complicity, responsibility, and accountability in the wake of the Holocaust.
My trip began when I traveled from the airport to station 17 in the heart of Grunewald – a beautiful, upscale, suburb of Berlin. The way was easy – it was a German railroad, after all. The station where I got off was fairly new and fairly busy. It was clean and clearly marked with concise directions that helped me figure out which way I needed to go to meet up with the others.
A week later, before we went on the next leg of our travels, we went as a group back to Station 17. I hated every minute of it. We weren’t there to get on the train. Instead of going the way I had come from a week before, we took a different way. Because there was a gate across the entrance we had to walk up what was little more than an unkempt service road that sat adjacent to the fairly new façade of the Grunewald station. At the top of the hill was a set of old tracks. The metal was rusting, the wooden ties were decaying, and there were weeds growing everywhere. The difference between these tracks and the tracks of the new Station 17 was striking. One set of tracks was old, the other – new. One set had fallen into disrepair, the other was kept in perfect running order. One set sat unused and nearly forgotten – the other set of tracks was used every day by thousands.
When I walked up to the tracks, I noticed that hefty, iron grates had been installed on either side. The sheets of metal extended for about 75 or 100 feet down the tracks, I don’t remember exactly. What I do remember is that every few feet, there was a date, a number, and the name of a place etched into the metal. April 3rd, 1943 – 1143 – Auschwitz. April 8th, 1943 – 99 – Dachau. Between October 1941 and February 1945, 55,000 men, women, and children left Berlin from Station 17. Most would never leave the destination etched in the metal beneath my feet.
When I finally looked up, I noticed that the tracks to the old station 17 ran parallel to the tracks of the new station. The old tracks continued past the point where the memorial ended. Eventually, they vanished into thick, undergrowth – shrubs, weeds, vines, and thorns obscured the way. Lest you accidentally venture down too far and get hurt, there was a brand new warning sign at the end of the memorial. Caution tape haphazardly stretched between the sign and the graffitied rubble of an aging building warned you not to follow the tracks into the undergrowth. “Warning” the sign read, “tracks not cleared of snow and ice. Bodily harm may result from trespassing.”
Have you ever seen a European “do not enter” sign? Ours looks like a red circle with a red line through it. Theirs is a red circle with the figure of a man in the center – arms outstretched in a warning.
Or perhaps, here they are outstretched in welcome.
I don’t think that I will ever forget that sign. It reminds me that the way that is obscured; the way that is treacherous; the way that is overgrown with thorns and brambles; the way that leads to death – that is the way of Jesus. It is the way of the cross. It is not a popular way. It is not well-traveled. The way of Jesus is different than the way of the world.
The way of the world says live for yourself. Jesus says die to yourself.
The way of the world says satisfy yourself. Jesus says deny yourself.
The way of the world says forget the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the hated. Jesus says go out of your way and serve them.
The way of the world says that all should coexist as one big happy family because at the end of the day beliefs don’t really matter. Jesus says speak the truth in love.
The way of the world says fight for yourself. Jesus says turn the other cheek.
The way of Jesus is not militant or mournful. The way of Jesus does not fight for its rights, its status, or its fame in the world. But neither does the way of Jesus acquiesce to the way of the world and let the world determine what is good, right, and beautiful. Rather, the way of Jesus brings love to those who hate, forgiveness to those who sin, and reconciliation to a world separated from God.
It was on that way, that path, those tracks that lead to death that God met you – lost in your rebellion, dead in your sin. Jesus met you on the cross and gave you life. Life eternal that begins with new life now, today – a new life lived according to his design, following his way. God’s call in Isaiah is for you. Forsake life lived your way, and return to the Lord. Today, Jesus calls out to you “Take up your cross, and follow me!”
Following Jesus changes everything. There is not a single aspect of your life that is not touched by the transformative work of Christ that was done to you in the Font. Your time, your money, your habits, your watchlist, your love – they all belong to Him. Use the life he gives for the purposes he desires. The seasons will change, the culture will shift, and persecution will come just as Jesus promised that it would. Do not let such things distract you from the way of the cross. After all, you do not need the world’s permission to love. So die to yourself. Live for your neighbor. Love your enemy. And when you fail, Jesus will be there, standing on the tracks, in the way of death – arms outstretched in welcome.
You were bought with a price.
You are His.
Follow him.