So, I just needed to do a really dumb comic that cracked me up this week. I’ve been up to my eyeballs reading John Wesley’s sermons on Christian Perfection and on the ongoing need for repentance in believers. And maybe next week I’ll figure out how to turn that into a comic for you. But this week, I am reminded that John Wesley was SUPER evangelical. He was all about conversion, about reminding us of how worthless we are because of our sin. How Jesus gives us worth, and so we should feel it in our hearts: the need to repent and come to Christ. Reading all these sermons, I am acutely aware that I don’t use this language anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I still believe in sin. I still believe in the profound human need for Christ for salvation. I’m just not going to preach it the way John Wesley did. I’m not going to preach it the way modern evangelicals do.
When I preach the gospel, I want to move the emphasis away from fear. I shouldn’t fall in love because I’m afraid of something (like being alone, or like what would this person do to me if I don’t do what he wants me to do). I should fall in love because the qualities of this man are everything my heart desires. So when it comes to falling in love with God, it shouldn’t be a fear-based decision. What are the incredible ways God is deserving of my full love? What are the incredible things God has done to win my affection? God has given God’s very self to love me. God has made me in God’s image and set me free to actually live in that wholeness and happiness. There’s lots of good ways to live, but there is no better life than the life lived in the love of Christ.
Maybe that doesn’t make me a classic Wesleyan, but that’s not what I’m about. I’m about taking the best of John and Charles Wesley and challenging the parts that don’t seem to resonate with all we’ve learned in the last several hundred years. At the end of the day, John and Charles were humans just like us. They did great things, wrote brilliant poetry and sermons, and yet they were just people. People like you and me. And you and I are people capable of great faith and great action. And yet we are just people too, people who can really get it wrong!
So as I make fun of sweet John and Charles, I’m curious. What are you missing most this quarantine?