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\u201cFor which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.\u2019\u201d (Luke 14:28-30)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Much to the amazement of the men who attend a program that I sponsor, called \u201cMen, Movies & God, I show the movie, \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d.\u00a0 The brainchild of writer, Paul Thomas Anderson, and actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, it is a story that is loosely based on Upton Sinclair\u2019s novel, Oil, written <\/em>in 1927.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fortunate that the movie takes that novel as little more than a starting point, because the novel is truly dreadful.\u00a0 Written with long, preachy essays designed to make the case for socialism over capitalism, Oil <\/em>is Ayn Rand for leftists. \u00a0\u201cThere Will be Blood\u201d is one of those rare occasions when it is easy to say, the movie is better than the book.<\/p>\n
The movie, however is not a simplistic diatribe on economics. Rather, it is an intense exploration of what happens when a human being gives himself wholeheartedly to a bankrupt world view.\u00a0 Talking one evening to a man he believes is his long-lost brother, Lewis\u2019s character, Daniel Plainview observes:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a competition in me.\u00a0 I want no one else to succeed.\u00a0 I hate most people\u2026.I see nothing worth liking.\u00a0 I want to earn enough money I can get away from everyone\u2026.from these people.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And, so he does.\u00a0 When he discovers that the man who has befriended him is not his brother, he murders him.\u00a0 He exploits people to buy up huge tracts of land.\u00a0 He sends his son away when the boy is made deaf by an accident.\u00a0 When his son returns and begins to talk to his father about following his footsteps by building his on oil company in Mexico, Plainview drives him away, arguing that he can only be a competitor.\u00a0 And, in order to silence the charalatan-preacher who knows him best, he murders him in a violent outburst.\u00a0 Plainview\u2019s final line and the last line of the movie is \u201cI\u2019m finished.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so he is.\u00a0 Plainview has chosen the tower that he will build, and although he may not have anticipated the cost, he has paid it.\u00a0 And he is finished in every sense of the word.\u00a0 He has won the competition he has set out to win.\u00a0 He is wealthy and alone.\u00a0 His contempt has led him to dominate or drive away everyone who might have befriended him.\u00a0 And he has blood on his hands, both literally and metaphorically.<\/p>\n
What might have been a trite, simplistic movie that retraced the argument of Sinclair\u2019s novel, Anderson and Lewis offer up a geography of the human heart.\u00a0 And Jesus understands how different that geography can be: We can choose life or we can reject it.\u00a0 And, if we do reject it, whether we do it wholeheartedly in the way Daniel Plainview does, or we pursue life, but we do it half-heartedly \u2013 the results are strikingly different.<\/p>\n
This is why the path of discipleship that Jesus describes was referred to as \u201cthe Way\u201d.\u00a0 And why you won\u2019t find 19th<\/sup> century references to \u201creligion\u201d in the text of the New Testament.\u00a0 The Christian life cannot be reduced to rituals, conventions, or beliefs \u2013 as important as those are.\u00a0 It is \u2013 according to the New Testament \u2013 a road that leads to life,[i]<\/a> a journey,[ii]<\/a> a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world,[iii]<\/a> a path out of desperation,[iv]<\/a> a life built out of practices and convictions that heal our relationships with God and with one another.[v]<\/a><\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t \u201cpie in the sky, bye and bye\u201d.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t a \u201cget out hell free card\u201d.\u00a0 It is a decision about how to live life now.\u00a0 The decision not to avoid hell, but to avoid becoming hell.\u00a0 Not the decision to go to heaven, but to begin breathing in its life-giving influence now.<\/p>\n
Based on what I have witnessed over the years, I can\u2019t say this often enough.\u00a0 Christians \u2013 far too often \u2013 talk about taking the summer off from church, about Bible study for others (but not for themselves), and too often satisfy themselves with checking off a Sunday or two, drifting through their relationship with God, rather than asking God, \u201cWhat kind of tower \u2013 meaning, what kind of life \u2013 am I supposed to be building?\u201d<\/p>\n
Let me say this as clearly as I can \u2013 I don\u2019t care anymore than you do about the church as an organization.\u00a0 I never have and \u2013 at this late stage \u2013 I doubt that there is anything that will entice me to care about it.<\/p>\n
What I care about is the fact that Jesus creates the church, one baptized body at a time, building it up to be his<\/em> body.\u00a0 And \u2013 as his body \u2013 to be the place where people are healed, forgiven, and restored to wholeness, so that we can become agents of healing, forgiveness, and restoration.\u00a0 You can believe that or not.\u00a0 But what Jesus is saying in the Gospel of Luke is that you can\u2019t be half-hearted about it.<\/p>\n
You have to make it the <\/em>thing.\u00a0 You have to recognize that it might cost you everything else.\u00a0 You need to be prepared to pay that price, if it comes down to it.\u00a0 And it might cost you family, friends, and possessions.<\/p>\n
The Christian life is what Eugene Peterson calls, \u201cA long obedience in the same direction\u201d.[vi]<\/a>\u00a0 That is why Jesus lists this outrageous, provocative list of things that his path, his way, might cost you.\u00a0 It\u2019s entirely up to him, of course.\u00a0 And it is entirely a function of what happens to us.<\/p>\n
Some of us may lose family as a result of our faith.\u00a0 One friend of mine chose to follow Jesus, and his frustrated, angry parents finally told him, \u201cYou were an accident.\u00a0 We never wanted you anyway.\u201d\u00a0 Another friend\u2019s husband told her, \u201cYou can become a priest, as long as it stays a hobby.\u201d\u00a0 Another friend who wouldn\u2019t be half-hearted about his faith lost his job, struggled along with part-time jobs for over a year, and lived with the anger of his wife until it pulled their marriage apart.\u00a0 We all know the story of the saints ancient and modern who lost their lives in witness to their faith.<\/p>\n
Jesus isn\u2019t dealing in abstractions here.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve both seen it and lived with the realities he is describing.<\/p>\n
But he describes the path of discipleship in this way because we aren\u2019t \u201cplaying\u201d church and we aren\u2019t indulging in a bit of nice poetry.\u00a0 The Christian life is not a nice thing for nice people to do.\u00a0 It is a frank assessment of how broken we are, how broken the people around us are, and it is the offer a way \u2013 the<\/em> Way \u2013 out and through.<\/p>\n
Now, frankly, that means that the way of Jesus is also not<\/em> a lot of other things.\u00a0 I have already named two of them.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t eternal fire insurance, and it isn\u2019t about being nice.\u00a0 Yes, our lives are hidden in Christ and in Christ we live now and will live, embraced by the power of the Resurrection.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not the main point.<\/p>\n
Eternal life is life lived out in the presence of God and on the way, we are changed, and we changed not just in the life to come, but in this life as well.\u00a0 We are blessed in order to bless others.\u00a0 And counting the cost means realizing that as Christians we are called to belong to Christ.\u00a0 But that also means that the way isn\u2019t about being nice.\u00a0 Apart from the fact that being nice isn\u2019t always calls for, it isn\u2019t the point.\u00a0 Jesus, as described in Luke\u2019s Gospel, isn\u2019t being nice either.\u00a0 There are times in life when \u2013 if we want to be healed \u2013 we need to hear hard things.\u00a0 We need boundaries.\u00a0 We need discipline.\u00a0 We need to sacrifice.\u00a0 We need to repent.\u00a0 There are times when \u2013 if others are going to be healed \u2013 those who exploit them need to be opposed.\u00a0 Bullies need to be resisted.\u00a0 Tyrants need to be told no \u2013 or more than just told no.<\/p>\n
But, beyond eternal fire insurance and a niceness-factory.\u00a0 The Christian way is also not about me and mine.\u00a0 It is not about anyone\u2019s brand of politics.\u00a0 It is not about countries \u2013 even the one we love.\u00a0 So, you can\u2019t wrap family values round it.\u00a0 You can\u2019t merge it with the views of a political party, and you can\u2019t wrap it in anyone\u2019s flag. \u00a0Come to that, you can\u2019t wrap it in our denominational flag.<\/p>\n
The Christian way is the decision to follow Jesus.\u00a0 To begin to follow that path and to take seriously the conviction that we are here as church \u2013 as his body \u2013 to make that journey together.\u00a0 Each of us will need to count the cost.<\/p>\n
In every generation there are Daniel Plainviews.\u00a0 People who choose a different kind of tower, a different kind of life, a different future.\u00a0 Not all of them are spectacularly abusive.\u00a0 But many of them are marked by the same kind of emptiness, thanks to ambition, selfishness, addiction, or mendacity.<\/p>\n
There are still others who stay nominally connected to the church, but never really commit.\u00a0 They nibble a few hors d oeuvres, they have an occasional drink, but their lives are mostly a pastiche of trips to Home Depot, a nine to five job, and the occasional Titans game.<\/p>\n
The invitation of Jesus, then, is to build a life, not a resume.\u00a0 To enter into it fully, not linger at the fringe of things.\u00a0 To find healing now, rather than postpone it to some indefinite future that will never come.\u00a0 To receive wisdom and grace, that you might become wisdom and grace in the lives others \u2013 your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, your families, and your neighbors.<\/p>\n
Count the cost.\u00a0 Say yes.\u00a0 Build a life.<\/p>\n
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Photo by Jon Tyson<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n
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[i]<\/a>Matthew 2:12m Acts 8:26; Acts 26.13; Matthew 7:13-14; John 11:25.<\/p>\n
[ii]<\/a>Acts 8:39, 30-37.<\/p>\n
[iii]<\/a> Acts 18:24-26.<\/p>\n
[iv]<\/a> Acts 16:16-18.<\/p>\n
[v]<\/a> Acts 9:1-2.\u00a0 The digest of passages that touch on this image can be found at:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.scriptureway.com\/about-the-site-author.html<\/a><\/p>\n