I started running a year and four months ago. When I first began, I couldn't run a mile, and I would get winded very easily. On Monday, I ran eight miles in a time that I would have never thought possible. I just got up with my room mate Scott, and we ran. Eight miles later we were done. That being said, I didn't just wake up and find myself able to run eight miles. I had to learn. When I first started running, running eight miles was something that was outside of my experience. I've been throwing this idea around in my head for a while now.
There was a man who, in the early 70's, wrote a book called Rules for Radicals. The man's name was Saul Alinsky and his book was about how to organize people to enact or prevent change in a society. When it came to tactics, Alinsky had numerous rules for would be organizers to keep in mind as they attempted to "stick it to the man." One of his rules was to "never go outside of the experience of those you're working with." To illustrate his point, he told story of how, in a fight against the Kodak company, he and 99 other poor ghetto dwellers purchased 100 tickets to a symphony orchestra being sponsored by Kodak. Before the show, the 100 protesters ate beans for 3 hours, then went to patronize the show. The beans had the exact effect that you are thinking, and the concert had to be cancelled due to farting. Kodak was furious but completely paralyzed. What Alinsky and his followers did was completely legal and totally nonpunishable. Yet one of Kodak's main cultural structures had been completely compromised. Alinsky's thinking was that there are very few ways a bunch of poor folks from the ghetto could fight Kodak; there were just not many means available to Alinsky's following that were "within their experience," or within what they could do with what they naturally possessed. But Alinsky's plan- farting up an orchestra hall- was well within their experience. But there was also something else: the tactic was also outside of the experience of Kodak.
In the book of John, the entire ninth chapter is dedicated to a story about a blind man that Jesus heals to "display the work of God in him." After the man is healed, he ends up before the Pharisees to give testimony to his healing. When the man tells the Pharisees how it went down, they are baffled. "How can a sinful man do such things?" Jesus is completely outside the experience of the Pharisees. Jesus is a sinner, and a sinner should not be able to heal people. They bring the formerly blind man's parents in to have them try to clear things up, but to no avail. Desperate now, the man Jesus healed is brought in once more and is told to "give glory to God(a saying that meant you better tell the truth)," and tell them who opened his eyes. Then the man says something truly amazing, "Whether He is a sinner or not, I don't know: but I was blind and now I see!" The man ends up being thrown out of the synagogue for testifying to this Jesus that was outside of the experience of the Pharisees.
The formerly blind man had experienced Jesus, and this had profoundly changed the way he lived(he was blind but now could see). Yet when he tried to explain Jesus to the Pharisees, they threw him out because what he was saying wasn't compatible with what they knew. We can only testify to what we know. We can only explain and act within our own experience. That goes for Christians and non - Christians. Therefore, it makes sense that when we try to explain our experiences with Jesus, they are sometimes taken as unbelievable or incompatible. As flawed and broken humans, Jesus is outside all of our experiences.
In John chapter 10 Jesus calls His followers sheep and tells those listening that His sheep will know His voice. He knows His sheep and those who don't believe Him are not His sheep. Jesus says that those who are His sheep will recognize that He is the Messiah simply because they are with him, following him around. That's what sheep do, they follow the shepherd who protects their lives. But this is problematic for the Pharisees who don't believe Jesus is the Messiah. The things that Jesus says always confounds them or just plain rubs them the wrong way. None of them would ever claim to follow Jesus, heck, most of them try to kill Jesus throughout the book of John. But therein lies the problem. The only way to understand Jesus is to experience Him. The only way to come to God is to journey with Jesus. This is why Jesus never tried to convince anyone of His divine nature. He simply told them to "Come and See." We are always invited to experience Jesus firsthand, and as it turns out, this is the only way to make sense of Him. It's only through following the shepherd that the sheep realizes it's need for rescue.
This is the great thing about the Christian story. It's not a story about Jesus that we look into and make sense of. The story of the Bible is the one that we are living. It's a story about Jesus and us! When we look at the stories of Jesus in scripture as if we're looking through a window, it will never be practical. The gospel is meant to be lived. The truth is meant to be experienced, not examined.
Here's where we fail as Christians many times. We try to prove Jesus to people. We're afraid to sit and talk with them because we won't have enough evidence to win some argument on why they should convert. This is silly. It's like expecting them to wake up and run eight miles when they can't run one yet. It's a journey. So, instead of trying to prove Jesus to people, lets invite them to come along. Let's invite them to experience this Love. Let's tell them straight up that this is the only way it'll make sense. Better yet, let's bring them into our journey and go with them and Jesus. All it takes is inviting them to "come and see" this Jesus for themselves.
Philippians 3:16 extorts us to "live up to whatever truth we have attained." We can only testify to what we know. We can only act within our experiences. We cannot expect uneducated ghetto dwellers to fight a legal battle against a monstrous corporation for the same reason we can't expect anyone to be "reasoned" over to Christ. So let's go. Maybe it's time we discover what this "full-life" Christ is offering is all about.
