Contemporary culture is immersed in a philosophy of self-absorption and self-obsession. The emerging (or emergent) church is immersed in contemporary culture. Rather than the church - and the believers who make it up - being leaven within the culture to transform it, the lifestyles and longings of modern day followers of Christ bear no appreciable difference from that of our unchurched (unsaved, lost) neighbors and co-workers.

In the last quarter century the church stopped proclaiming a gospel directed at people’s real spiritual needs and has focused instead on the wants and desires of potential church goers in the same way that Starbucks markets overpriced coffee to potential consumers.  Peruse the “Christian Living” section of your local Christian bookstore.  The titles there evidence the fact that the church is this life focused rather than eternity focused: The Search for Significance: Seeing Your True Worth Through God’s Eyes; Your Best Life Now; 9 Things You Simply Must Do to Succeed in Love and Life; Approval Addiction: Overcoming Your Need to Please Everyone; Look Good, Feel Great; 12 Keys to Enjoying a Healthy Life Now…the list goes on.

What has resulted is a theology that says Christians don’t suffer, and when they do it is most definitely the exception and quite possibly because of sin in their life. The contemporary church immersed in a contemporary culture of happy, prosperous consumers has failed its constituency by failing to faithfully proclaim what God’s word says about the reality of suffering.

Suffering in the Christian life is the rule, not the exception.  From the day Christ called us to follow Him he fully disclosed two prerequisites: denying ourselves and taking up our cross.  When Saul of Tarsus was converted on the road to Damascus, he didn’t experience a Benny Hinn-esque healing. Quite the opposite.  God blinded him, left him in that condition for days in a hired house on a street called Straight, sent a reluctant evangelist by the name of Ananias to tell him “what great things he must suffer for my name” (Acts 9)

And suffer he did.  Read 2 Corinthians 11 and 12: five times beaten with 39 stripes, three times beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked three times, a night and a day floating in the sea, danger from friends, and foes, and the criminal element, weary and in pain, hungry and thirsty, naked and cold. And to add insult to injury God refused to answer his prayer for healing from whatever was ailing him as a thorn in his flesh.  Paul was told to be content with grace in the midst of his suffering.  Churches throughout Asia Minor were praying for his release from prison.  Ultimately Paul was beheaded like Nick Berg. Where was God?

Hear how Paul responds to all of this:

“I will glory in the things which concern my infirmities” (2 Corinthians 11:30)

“I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand…henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto them also who love His appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:8)

“The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom:to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.” (2 Timothy 4:18)

How could Paul glory in his sufferings and give glory to God in the midst of his suffering? The answer lies in a full reading of 2 Timothy 3 and 4, written at the end of his life just prior to his execution.  Note the use of the word “love” five times in these two chapters: lovers of self (2 Timothy 3:2); lovers of money (2 Timothy 3:2 - “covetous” in some translations); lovers of pleasure (2 Timothy 3:4); love his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8); loved this present world (2 Timothy 4:10).

Our contemporary culture is perfectly captured in four of these uses of the word love: loving self, loving money, loving pleasure, and loving the world.  The contemporary church has successfully “Christianized” these loves, using them as values upon which to grow congregations.  One of the five loves mentioned in these two chapters stands in stark contrast to the other four: loving the appearing of Jesus Christ.

A life lived in anticipation of seeing Jesus and hearing Him say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: enter into the joy of your Lord” can endure suffering in this life - because such a focus causes us to realize that the worst that happens to us here and now can never separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8). “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

The tragedy is that the emerging church immersing itself in our culture of self-absorbtion and self-obesession has sold the future and eternal “weight of glory” for the immediate yet transient satisfaction of your best life now. And when Christians encounter difficultly the are ill-prepared to deal with it biblically because they’ve been sold a psychological bill of goods. The storms come, the winds blow, there is no firm foundation on solid biblical ground, and “Cultural Christian” is blown away (Matthew 7:24-27). But he’s living his best life now. Who cares what’s coming.

“He who loves his life shall lose it; but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:25). What you love determines your destiny. What you treasure reveals your heart. What the church needs now is hearts brimming in anticipation of what awaits them later - looking not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen. In a word, what the church needs is faith - the discipline to believe that the one who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it, even though in the midst of our suffering we can’t quite see it yet.