.
I knew from the moment I read about Jesus getting punched in
the face in a Portland coffee shop that Matt Mikalatos is not one to write
cautiously. No, both in his wonderfully zany narratives and his choice of
themes, he avoids the easy path. I especially appreciated him taking on
transformation in his latest book, Night of the Living Dead Christian
, because I think it’s one of the thornier
issues of the faith.
, because I think it’s one of the thornier
issues of the faith.
Sometimes people change behaviors in conjunction with coming
to Jesus, but their underlying motives and heart postures remain the same.
Other times, there’s a genuine repentance and change of
heart, but behavior shifts are more gradual and slow to happen.
Or in some cases, a few major things happen in the
beginning, then the drama quiets down and sometimes things are so quiet behind
the window shades, you’re not sure Jesus is even in there working, aside from
his initial improvements.
Of course, that’s not a question we like to admit to, but
when you’ve been in the church a while, you can start to wonder. I was born
into this, which means I’ve spent more than 30 years around Jesus’ followers,
but I can probably count on one hand the conversions I’ve seen from before to
after. Maybe even one finger.
Sometimes that’s left me doubtful God is really real or
makes much difference. But then I always come back to the example of my father,
who became a Christian at 19, when he was in Tennessee for boot camp, and went
on to become a person who, by the reports of his own siblings, is completely
different from the troubled adolescent he was before Jesus.
One time I got to sit there with him at a meal, while he
explained to a colleague how he used to live. The man’s disbelief was visible
as my responsible, clean-cut father described his former self. “You were like
that?!! How did you change?”
Others who’ve heard me tell Dad’s story have suggested that
maybe the reason for his transformation was not so much Jesus as him figuring
out that certain behaviors worked out much better than his old ways.
Certainly, the discipline and self-control that the
Christian life encouraged in him have proven beneficial. After he married my
mom at 25, Dad went on to get a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering,
to which he recently added a Ph.D. If you count their happy, 34-year marriage,
that’s at least four major accomplishment that all require significant,
short-term self-denial in service of long-term goals.
But in some ways I think of my dad as weak man who’s done
many things requiring strength not because he was or thought himself to be
strong, but because he went out every day and tried to be obedient to God and
his responsibilities that day.
Maybe it’s like he’s a man who’s been walking a tight rope
across a river for several decades. The people who come to see him might ooh
and ah at his experience and surefootedness, but if they stood close enough to
watch him get on the rope each day, they’d hear the words of someone attempting
it for the first time.
“I want to cross,”
he’d say. “I believe I can, and I hope I will, but I can’t say for certain I
shall, so I’m just going to do my best and move my feet one step at a time.”
I think it’s the
faithful power of Jesus in him that’s produced a life of such consistency, but
that has prevailed because of Dad’s humble, constant acknowledgment of his own
frailty and need for God. A man more confident in his own strength and resolve
would be too proud to depend so greatly on his savior … and would have probably
taken a lot more dunks in the river.
But it isn’t just my dad’s life that gives me hope in the
power of God to make a difference. I can think of other friends I’ve known who
are now quite different people than when I first met them. The cause was not
always conversion, exactly; sometimes they just started to take God more
seriously.
There are things that happen only when you give up your
right to say, “yes, but” and start just saying “yes” to God. I can think of
many moments past where everything hung on my willingness to give up what He
was calling me to sacrifice. It was often something quite small in an objective
sense, but because of what I truly worshiped, that small thing had become
ultimate.
More recently, though, I’ve had chances to say “yes” not to
a sacrifice but an opportunity. One night last November, I got an idea to
organize a Valentine’s day of prayer for the men who buy sex: Pray for the Johns Day. The main work
to be done was clearly pretty quickly. But would I do it?
A part of me was hesitant. I’ve had ideas before, some of
which I even pursued, but often those attempts came to nothing. To pray for the
johns is to ask for transformation on a very large scale indeed. We’re asking
not just that God turn men from their sin and bring repentance, but that He
transform them into men who take up what good works God may yet have for them
to do.
At the very least, to ask that risks disappointment. And
yet, I think such a prayer is to take the heart of the gospel seriously. The
Bible says sin cut off man’s life-sustaining connection to God, without which
we become increasingly monstrous (as Matt describes so creatively in his book),
and the world around us overgrown and menacing. Jesus came so that we could be
rehumanized and the whole creation restored to God’s good purpose for it. If
that’s true, then transforming lives is a central part of the plan. That change
may not come easily or quickly — as in the case of Matt’s friend, the vampire —
but it’s possible.
So if you have five minutes or ten or even a lunch break
free this Valentine’s Day, would you consider praying for the johns with me?
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