Chapter 3: Agents
“One of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no-one to force you anymore you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”
When considering purpose, there are typically two rivaling concepts in Christian demeanor. There are those desiring to save the world and those that aim to lead a quiet and humble life. In this chapter we will look further at those two ideas and hopefully strike a balance between the two.
Let’s start with 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 which encourages us “to aspire to lead a quiet life, to attend to your own business, and to work with your hands, as we commanded you. In this way you will live a decent life before outsiders and not be in need.” So for me, one of the biggest questions is “what is a quiet life anyway?” I’ve thought hard about that. We know it’s not a lack of work, in fact it says the opposite. We know it’s not that of solitude, because we are to do this before outsiders. So what is it? Consider you’re inner peace - when you’re disconnected from work, say on vacation or even enjoying a Saturday evening date night, there is a stillness that we all long for. On the contrary, consider the last confrontational argument you had. If you’re anything like me, it’s hard to shut up when you’re trying to convince someone you’re right.
Leading a quiet life doesn’t mean we disengage from society, it just means we stop trying to prove people wrong. Dr. Chris Moody, in his book Disciple-Making Disciples talks about the Church being on defense or offense. The point he makes is that we aren’t called to be on defense, if that were true then oh how much responsibility we’d feel! But instead, we proceed offensively from a place of victory, and when we run plays, we advance not by crusade, but by whimsical invitation into life to the full. Defensive posturing wields truth like a weapon used to guard. Offensive posturing wields truth like a tool used to build. Defensive posturing sees grace as threatening. Offensive posturing sees grace as essential as truth. For truth without grace is mean, but grace without truth is meaningless.
We often want to be a gracious people, and that is righteous, but we cannot do it at the expense of truth. A.W. Tozer said it like this, “Satan’s greatest weapon is man’s ignorance of God’s word.” Both grace and truth are in that statement, too. You cannot separate the truth of God’s word from the character of Christ. We are to be agents of reconciliation, people filled with grace and bound by truth, striving to reconcile souls back to the King.
As Christians press on to become better agents of redemption and reconciliation in such a divided world, we must be careful on what exactly we intend to do. If we say our purpose is to reconcile ‘for’ our Lord Jesus, (vs. the word ‘to’) we might very well run into a never ending confrontation. Let’s look at a few N.T. texts where the word reconcile is used:
• Mt. 5:24 - leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.
• Ro 5:10 - For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
• 2 Cor 5:18-20 Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
• Eph 2:16 and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.
In all of these verses, the common theme isn’t achieving world peace or reconciliation between one culture and another. The common theme is check your own heart and be reconciled to your brother, and then make it your life’s work to reconcile one heart at a time to God, through prayer and the power of the Spirit within you. The only thing that can conquer sin is the cross, and that alleviates enormous pressure to fix, or defend, or even screw up.
How do we feel we are doing with that? If we truly want the world to change, the answer is sharing Jesus. One broken person to the next. I love the visual of “one beggar telling another beggar where the food is.” That’s it. But are we doing that as well as we could, or are we getting consumed by something else? There’s an interview with Simon Sinek that I strongly recommend googling, but I’ve ripped a few quotes from it here to be mindful of:
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[The problem] is we are growing up in a Facebook/Instagram world, in other words, we are good at putting filters on things. We’re good at showing people that life is amazing even though I am depressed. An entire generation now has access to an addictive, numbing chemical called dopamine, through cellphones and social media.
We know, the science is clear, we know that people who spend more time on Facebook suffer higher rates of depression than people who spend less time on Facebook.
If you are sitting at dinner with your friends, and you are texting somebody who is not there – that’s a problem. That’s an addiction. If you are sitting in a meeting with people you are supposed to be listening and speaking to, and you put your phone on the table, that sends a subconscious message to the room “you’re just not that important.” The fact that you can’t put the phone away, that’s because you are addicted.
There should be no cellphones in conference rooms. None, zero. When sitting and waiting for a meeting to start, instead of using your phone with your head down, everyone should be focused on building relationships. We ask personal questions, “How’s your dad? I heard he was in the hospital.” “Oh he’s really good thanks for asking. He’s actually at home now.” “Oh I’m glad to hear that.” “That was really amazing.” “I know, it was really scary for a while there.” — That’s how you form relationships. “Hey did you ever get that report done?” “No, I totally forgot.” “Hey, I can help you out. Let me help you.” “Really?” — That’s how trust forms. Trust doesn’t form at an event in a day. Even bad times don’t form trust immediately. It’s the slow, steady consistency and we need to create mechanisms where we allow for those little innocuous interactions to happen. But we’re taking away all those little moments.
None of us should charge our phones by our beds. We should be charging our phones in the living rooms. Remove the temptation. Some say “but it’s my alarm clock.” Buy an alarm clock. They cost eight dollars.
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Many of us are enslaved to the scroll. I’m sure I could somehow turn that into a Pharisee joke, but it’s nearly the opposite of legalism. We are trapped in nothingness and it’s devouring our greatest purpose in life. When and if we do break free from the bondage, we often suffer from analysis paralysis. There’s so much that we could do, so we freeze and do nothing. If we truly want to change the world, we must have the discipline to love the person next to us, the plan to love the people we’re about to see, and the availability to love the people we might see. That’s impossible if we’re buried in a phone.
One of the things that has helped me here is something called anchoring your phone. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s very intentional and disruptive of my addiction. I anchor my phone to my home office everyday after 5 pm as if it were an old school landline. By doing so, I’m forced to, walk away from my wife and kids, go into a room by myself, and scroll on social media. Maybe that’s no big deal for you, but for me that’s incredibly embarrassing. I’d rather be with my kids. But if the phones in the living room, I’m not forced to choose- I convince myself that I’m choosing both in relaxation, but all my son sees is me choosing my phone.
Beyond that, I’ve divided my life goals into three parts- kingdom, family, legacy. Kingdom is all about life in the Church, so serving, or Disciple-Making, or community groups. I intentionally invest in those things, rather than passively attend. Family is obvious enough, but the key is intentionality. I intentionally plan and think about how to love them individually. Lastly is legacy. This is working to glorify God, or being a good steward of that which I’ve been given. All of these things are small and have constant overlap, and each is how we can be effective agents of reconciliation. We all have this opportunity together.
Which is an idea worth considering. In Amos 5:7, it says “There are those who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground.” And I hear that verse and I instantly think of what black culture is going through. How can I not? The word justice alone is a decade long buzz word, but also when you consider so many of the actions by police officers and courts (no matter our opinion on the issues), it’s impossible to not see bitterness continue to swell- in white and black hearts. Our hope as Christians though should be not allowing the second part to happen. When I think of being agents of reconciliation, I see an enormous opportunity to tell stories of being a beggar finding food. So that’s what I’ll do- I can’t speak to a black American’s circumstances, but I can speak to my own and how spiritually poor I’ve been— because I bought into a lie and it left me bankrupt.
If white privilege is something you hold as truth, then I will meet you there in an effort to encourage both black and white away from the notion that it is a privilege. Let’s define it- What is white privilege? It states that white people, more specifically white males, more specifically straight white males, have the upper hand when it comes to being successful. As such, when I was 22 years old I rode that express train and drank that American Tea. My friends and I started a clothing line, secured a $2.5 million investment, stayed in a Brooklyn penthouse, got a secondary office across from the Empire State Building, hired some consultants, attended private dinners and partied with celebrities, saw the company we built on the walls in Vegas night clubs and in the hands of huge buyers. I’m here to tell you that I’ve been there, wherever there is, and it left me more empty than I’ve ever felt in my life. That’s what white privelge can get you. A mirage of life.
Note: At the risk of stating the obvious, black people achieve what I just detailed every day. Though it’s not my point here, it is regularly done. My point is I know first hand what the most cliche American dream tastes like; empty. If I am in fact one beggar telling another beggar about good food- I’m certainly not leading them there. End note.
If white people have the upper hand, it’s a worldly upper hand that isn’t worth having. We know this to be true in our school systems. Private school kids aren’t any ‘better’ than inner-city public school kids, they just have better drugs. You might say, “Yeah, but those private school kids grow up with parents who are politicians and CEO’s and they get off the hook with their drug charges." You may be right, but we know that’s just a prettier mask for another man dying. That’s precisely my point; That life is of no value for the Christian. It’s easy to say that as someone who has had this privilege my entire life, but if anything, I’m the most qualified to point to it’s emptiness. There is no lasting joy to be found in the American dream. The American dream should only be seen as valuable when it’s used as a tool for the Kingdom.
My grandmother used to say, "Let not the freedom from your fetters become the fetter to a greater freedom!" Black and white culture are now free to choose together what the next 50 years will look like. We all have the opportunity to be effective agents of reconciliation, if only we can successfully free ourselves from our dreams and our phone. (Which in some cases are sadly being reduced to the same thing)
We are either slaves to the world, or slaves to the Kingdom. One is passively fallen into, the other is obediently walked into - not for salvation (to be clear), but as a result of salvation for sanctification. Paul writes extensively about this in Romans 6. He says, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.”
Romans 6:16-19
I’d like to end this chapter in Romans. Chapter 15 is the final exclamation point on Paul’s most comprehensive work, but I want to point out a few verses that I see especially relevant as we wrap up the idea of being agents of reconciliation.
Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves. Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification.
Romans 15:1-2 NASB
If we are strong, if we have the ability, if we have an audience, then there is a clear goal for the Christian. The NIV translates the Greek word ‘oikodomē’ as ‘build one up’ but that can be easily twisted in our American culture. We aren’t called to build one another up for the sake of one another. Our primary goal should not be to see our loved ones become successful in Gods eyes. Our primary goal should be to see our loved one put their trust in Jesus. True edification, a true definition of oikodomē is building one up in the faith.
Now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Romans 15:5-6 NASB
Paul writes here that we are to be of the same mind “lifting one voice.” How can we lift one voice if we aren’t prepared to surrender our own? We must set any other identity aside. We’re not here to elevate human voices, that may be the most counterculture comment I can make. We’re here to elevate His voice in all people.
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to admonish one another.
Romans 15:13-14 NASB
Real hope does not rest in us changing or saving the world. Real hope rests in believing God’s promises that He will do it. We must “admonish” one another when we see one another prioritize anything over the glory of God alone. The greek word there for admonish is noutheteō which means to caution or reprove gently. Remember truth cannot be divorced from grace.
But I have written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again, because of the grace that was given me from God.
Romans 15:15
I love that it ends this way. He reminds us one final time that it was all God. It was all Him and will continue to be Him. At the end of The Horse and His Boy, a similar quote happens when Aslan appears and recaps the provisions throughout the entire story. “I was the lion” he says, as he walks through all the unseen graces. May we never lose sight of His work in and through our lives.
