Adventures in Religion

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     The very word "adventure" has a touch of glamor about it. We think of risk and daring when we hear it. There is nothing staid or commonplace in its implications. It is unfortunate that we seldom think of it in connection with the religion of Christ. That religion has lost something in its modern watered down version. It has been reduced to a routine of meeting attendance and this is carried out from a sense of duty or because of fear of divine reprisal. Actually the brand of "Christianity" with which we are familiar has little relationship to the kind of life which was characteristic of Jesus and the primitive saints. It has lost much of its verve and most of its vision.

     We have been conditioned to a life of security and safety. Our bank deposits are guaranteed by an insurance corporation. Old age has its social security and pensions. We are sheltered and protected against the storms of life. Every aspect of existence has its safeguards. Religion is no exception. The result is that it has lost its appeal to the fearless and brave. It tends to become primarily the resort of the every young or the very old--the adolescent and the aged. But the "Christianity" we see manifested is no more like the original article than a stroll through the meadow is like climbing the Matterhorn. The very fact that men have diluted and weakened it is proof that they cannot tackle the responsibility involved in its powerful demands.

     We hear a great many sermons dealing with the quiet life, and advocating a serene and placid disposition. These have led us to think that Christianity is a rocking-chair existence. We conjure up visions of saints as retired persons sitting in the shade, reading the Bible and conversing with mutual friends about matters of general concern. This is not the picture which the Bible paints. As God reveals it, the believer is a man of action impelled by an inner compulsion that allows no time for rest. He is pictured as a boxer, not in training but in combat. He is not beating the air or punching a bag, he is fighting for his life and willing to die to obtain it!

     He is depicted as a soldier, not on leave or furlough, but engaged in deadly warfare. God's word knows nothing about a soldier in civilian dress, but clad in the full panoply of armor with sword unsheathed and pressing the battle against an implacable foe. The Christian is engaged in a race. He is not sitting in the grandstand but is down on the course, running, straining, gasping, sweating, reaching toward the prize. We have become a nation of spectators. The many loll at ease to watch the few fight for victory. Thousands fill the stands to see a handful of persons battle it out on the playing field. This philosophy has invaded the field of religion and our contributions become the price of admission to watch professionals perform.

     We need to recapture the sense of personal adventure in the religion of Jesus.

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We should cease to make safety a fetish or security god. Faith is not a sure thing, it is a risk. It is a leap in the dark but with full confidence that His hands will be there to catch us and bear us up. Anyone who flies in a jet-powered plane six miles above the surface of the earth is taking a risk but not nearly so great a risk as if he were borne into space on an eagle's wings. "But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint" (Isa. 40:31). We have too many who are grounded by fright, bounded by caution and hounded by fear.

     Jesus did not teach men to "play it safe." He taught them to live dangerously. He implied that it was better to risk and lose than to keep through fear. Do you remember the man with one talent? "I was afraid and I went and hid your talent." This man expected to he commended for his prudence and discretion. Instead he was addressed as a "wicked and slothful servant." This seems strong language to apply to one who sought to safeguard another's property. But it is better to lose through use than to fail through fear. One is wicked when he seeks to "hold his own" when what he owns should not be held. He is slothful when he hides in the ground that which should be in circulation. Non-use is abuse! The master said, "You ought to have invested my money." When one invests he takes a chance. The one-talent individual pleaded the nature of the master as his excuse but the parable implies that it is that very thing which should prompt one to put what he has to work. The servant was faithful who "went and did"; that one was worthless who "went and hid."

     The New English Bible renders Matthew 16:25, "Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake, he will find his true self." Men leave home to seek for gold, uranium or diamonds. When they find that for which they are looking a dream comes true. Yet it is a fact that the actual finding is often an anti-climax. It is the anticipation, the searching without knowing what the next minute will produce that is the real adventure. Not so with the man who finds his "true self." Life really begins when this happens. Millions are doomed to plod their weary way through earthly existence and never make this discovery.

     Our lives are "bound by shallows and by miseries" as Shakespeare puts it, because we are afraid to risk everything. We are frightened by what our relatives will say or what the neighbors will think. We fetter and shackle ourselves by rigid conformity. Life becomes a drudgery and a bore. We want to "stay in good" with all of the brethren and we are resigned to insipid mediocrity to do so. "Whoever cares for his own safety is lost." There are great causes to challenge thinking. There are great crusades which need conducting. There are abuses that need correcting. Those who take up the cross will be ridiculed, reviled and derided. But the heart will beat faster with the spirit of real adventure and when it seems that all has been lost all will be gained. This is the way of the cross!

     There is a difference in being at cross purposes with those around you and having the cross purpose for your life. Too many have a martyr complex. These are not killed, they simply commit suicide. They do not lose their lives, they merely take them. They cannot find themselves because they look too close to home. They get in their own way. Note that it is not the man who merely invests his life who will gain. There are thousands who commit their lives to the church and the religious way of existence. You can check their names on the record, you can see them sitting in the pews every Lord's Day, you can behold their punctilious observance of all the ordinances as given. They will tell you that through habit "the church has become a part of our lives." That is the trouble--life is partitioned off in little well-defined cubicles. There isn't anything adventurous about such protected and well-regulated little procedures as they indulge.

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     Life must be lost for his sake and not undertaken for our own benefit. I tend to be a little skeptical of those who do their duty merely because they are afraid not to. Surely there is little zest about such an existence. One may put in the time when he ought to be throwing in his life. We tend to think of religion as an adventure when it is carried out by missionaries in a reeking jungle compound or in a foreign city with strange tongue and customs. But it is sometimes easier to meet a challenge across the ocean than to meet one across the street. One whose conscience troubles him about race prejudice can more easily go to Africa and preach to the blacks than he can go to the slums and teach a Bible class of Negroes in his own city. There is a difference in losing your life for his sake and running from it for your own sake. It is better to lose your life running into something than to desert it by running from something!

     We do not really lose our lives when we shut ourselves off from the rest of struggling humanity, we just lose our purpose for living. The medieval monks had their monasteries, we moderns have our factions. They both serve the same purpose. They keep the salt in the shaker, the leaven in the jar and the seed in the bag. Those who shut themselves in monasteries did not quit living, they just quit and went on living. Many of us have done the same thing. We need to restore the element of risk and adventure to Christianity. One reason the devil did not dare tackle too many of the early Christians was because they were daredevils. When he threatened to tie them to the stake and burn them they did not quail because "they were fit to be tied." We've lost that fitness, and more than anything else in these days we need to recapture it! When we stake all on Jesus we've nothing to lose at any other stake!