Building Bridges

The story is told of a group of hikers who wanted to climb yon hitherto unclimbed peak. They set out, but soon discovered a chasm they couldn't cross. So they went about fabricating a bridge and made it over. They continued, but encountered more of these obstacles. At some point they got so good at building these bridges that they stopped, opened a bridge-building business, and did quite well for themselves. Of course, they never hiked that peak.

We have seen those people ... and they are us -- Christians in 21st century America. We know the origins of Christianity; we have the book in our hands. We know the singularities of Christianity; the Son of God died to pay for our sins, we are saved by grace apart from works, we are born again, etc. We can see that the purpose of the Christian life is to know God and bring others to that same relationship. All clear as day. And yet ...

Someplace along the way many (most?) of us stopped to build bridges. That is, we stopped for side issues. Some stopped to pursue social justice. Some halted because they were appalled at the immorality of their day. Some "hove to" because the going got rough. "Really? Make disciples? That's a lot of work. All those 'one anothers'? 'Humility like Christ'? 'It's not about me'? Way too much." We're deeply concerned about particulars, like marriage, but have almost entirely forgotten God's primary purpose -- in marriage, for instance. And so on. So we end up as Christians and we go through the motions because, as I said, we know what those are, but we've forgotten the purpose. We've built a lot of bridges; can't we just keep building bridges instead of, you know, climbing to that peak?

Here's the difficulty. Like that story, bridges are necessary. We do need to pursue caring for the needy -- beginning first with our own. We do need to address immorality ... beginning first with our own. There are lots of bridges we do need to build. But when we lose track of our direction, we lose our direction. When the bridges become the purpose, the bridges become pointless. When we forget that we're supposed to be glorifying God and doing good works for the purpose of glorifying God, we forget our purpose. When we neglect making disciples and caring for one another in a myriad of ways, we get lost. And we make that ultimate purpose and relationship with Christ another mere religion. We need to remember our goal -- "like Christ." We need to return to our first love -- knowing God.