Recently struggling with the dissonance between the way I live/think/feel and Jesus' teachings in the gospels. With my background in therapy and living in the age of Oprah..a high goal for myself and in the way I minister to others is to be the most normal, healthy individual you can be (often translates into being "happy")--and yet I'm not sure how that fits in with what Jesus teaches. I have experienced and seen the maladies of following Jesus with judgmental legalism and non-thinking/thoughtful faith, but also have witnessed the consequences of making them palatable or less than outrageously extreme in our current culture. I've been reading Philip Yancey's "Rumors of Another World" again and in it found a great quote from Frederick Buechner which basically says that I need to be a little crazy to follow Jesus. Oddly enough, reading it makes me feel like a carefree kid who can laugh and just enjoy the day:
"If the world is sane, then Jesus is mad as a hatter and the Last Supper is the Mad Tea Party. The World says, Mind your own business, and Jesus says, There is no such thing as your own business. The world says, Follow the wisest course and be a success, and Jesus says, Follow me and be crucified. The world says Drive carefully--the life you save may be your own--and Jesus says, Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. The world says, Law and order, and Jesus says, Love. The World says, Get, and Jesus says, Give. In terms of the world's sanity, Jesus is crazy as a coot, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without being a little crazy too is labouring less under the cross than under a delusion. "We are fools for Christ's sake," Paul says, faith says--the faith that ultimately the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, the lunacy of Jesus saner than the grim sanity of the world."
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