by Ben Courson
You were included in the death of Christ and have died with Him to the religious system and powers of this world. Don’t retreat back to being bullied by the standards and opinions of religion—for example, their strict requirements, “You can’t associate with that person!” or, “Don’t eat that!” or, “You can’t touch that!” These are the doctrines of men and corrupt customs that are worthless to help you spiritually. For though they may appear to possess the promise of wisdom in their submission to God through the deprivation of their physical bodies, it is actually nothing more than empty rules rooted in religious rituals (Colossians 2:20-23 TPT).
Can I get an amen?
38
UNVEILED
The Jewish temple contained a room called the Holy of Holies, which was separated from the rest of the temple by a thick veil. This room was where the presence of God could be experienced in the most intimate way. According to Jewish custom, only the high priest could enter these holy precincts, and when he did, he had to have a rope attached to his foot. That way, if he was struck down by the presence of God, others could haul his body back out without entering themselves.
That is pretty serious stuff.
At the very moment when Jesus died, that temple veil was torn. From the top to the bottom.
Consider that for just a moment. From the top…to the bottom…God Himself did the tearing. He destroyed the barrier that was separating Him from human beings.
When He did, it wasn’t so much to get us into the presence of God, as to get the presence of God into us. It inaugurated a new kind of intimacy with Him.
In biblical times Jews would rend their garments when they were grieved or deeply shaken by a travesty. Ripping your shirt was a metaphor for rending your heart. It’s as if God was so shaken by the barrier separating Him from people that He tore it in grief. So now we can lean on His chest as the beloved disciple did, and hear the very beat of His heart. Tearing the veil, though, was much more than a sign of grief. It was also a sign of victory.
When NFL quarterback Cam Newton scores a touchdown, he tears his jersey in imitation of Superman. So too, Jesus, the Son of Man, triumphantly tore the religious barrier separating Him from the common folk, ripping religion apart forever.
The Old Testament said that we had to take off our shoes when we came upon holy ground. The New Testament says that the Father gives shoes to the prodigal because he’s now worthy to stand in Abba’s presence as a son.
The Old Testament said that the sheep had to die for the sins of the shepherd. The New Testament says that the Good Shepherd laid down His life for the sins of the sheep.
When the veil was torn, religion was permanently undone.
Because of that, we can know we’re kids of the King and friends of God.
How can one even begin to respond to such an amazing truth?
How about…Woo to the hoo!
39
NAKED HIPPIES
So, where did my rebellious hopefulness come from?
I can trace the origins of many of my attitudes to my parents.
Mom is one of the most hopeful and positive people on planet Earth. Seriously. She eats rainbow sandwiches for lunch and dines on Pegasus steak. She is drop-dead gorgeous, always happy, and she knows how to make every place feel like it is your long-lost home. She always makes sure the candles are lit, the windows are wide open, and music is drifting in to welcome you. She is a seven on the Enneagram, all about sun and fun. I want to be like her when I grow up. If I ever do…
While my optimism comes from mom, my rebellious side comes directly from my dad. Dad has always loved God passionately, but he never saw much use in religion. He never fit in with the religious establishment. No suits and ties. No strict decorum. He’d preach to the local hippie population who lived in tree houses. Their baptisms were always a wild celebration, because they were baptized naked. No joke. After a particularly effective sermon one day, some of them decided to burn their drugs in a big bonfire to show their repentance. You can imagine the unintended results. High on Jesus, for sure. Another time, while speaking at a Protestant leadership conference, he referred to Catholics as “our brothers and sisters,” which caused some 50 pastors to walk out on his talk. He just kept right on preaching his generous and ecumenical message of fellowship and inclusion. It didn’t really take him by surprise. He knew exactly what he was doing. If someone didn’t think he was adequately pious and orthodox, he could live with that.
So, I’m keeping a positive outlook, but I am also rebelling against conformist religious attitudes. I’m excited about a different way of approaching faith.
Last night, my friends Cambria and Bo (a.k.a. Cambo) were talking with me about the difference between religion and relationship. Jesus, we agreed, didn’t come to set up a new religion. In fact, religion is what killed Him. He didn’t want to follow a bunch of nitpicky rules about the Sabbath, for example. Instead He went against the rules and even performed healings on the holy day of rest. People were more important than religious observance.
Pay close attention to the people who made Jesus mad. It wasn’t the nonreligious folks. Not the mobsters and call girls. It was the religious leaders; the ones who kept all the rules and regulations, but missed the heart of what Jesus was really all about. He tore down the barriers that kept human beings from experiencing God. He threw the profiteers out of the temple, overturning their tables and overturning the system. He called the Pharisees “sons of the devil.” Everything Jesus did was a deliberate act of rebellion against religion. Why else would He purposely try to tick off the religious leaders by telling them they travelled across land and sea to make converts…who then became twice as much the sons of hell as they were. That’s cooked.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Jesus walked the earth today. Would the pious by-the-book religious leaders hang Him on a cross again for not conforming to their standards, their rules, and their regulations? I think that non-Christians would find Him winsome and fascinating and be hanging on every word, but I wonder if many modern Pharisees would complain that He did unexpected things that made them feel really uncomfortable. Would they start the chorus of “Crucify Him”? I wonder.
Sometimes religion actually turns people away from God. It becomes a substitute for the complexities of a real encounter with God.
Jesus isn’t looking for religious commitments out of us. He is offering friendship of the deepest kind.
He created you for the highest of all purposes: to enjoy the joy of being enjoyed by God.
That, my friends, is the meaning of life in one sentence.
Bam.
God’s jam isn’t getting you to obey more rules—don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do. That wasn’t Jesus’ message. That is just the religion of Churchianity.
Instead, we are children of God. Being His child is a much more biblical phrase and a much more beautiful reality than is contained in that worn-out descriptor, “Christian.” He wants you to be free, to have fun, to enjoy Him to death—His lovingkindness is, the Bible tells us, better than life.
What Cambria and Bo and I decided is that we wouldn’t die for religion, but we would proudly die for the One whom Paul calls the “God of Hope.” Religion is boring and guilt inducing and conformist. Being God’s child, on the other hand, is endlessly exciting. It is the adventure of having a relationship with a wild and surprising God!
Jesus said that He came to deliver the oppressed and set the captives free. Paul tells his readers that “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).
You are free.
Free to skate and love and eat Gushers and hang out in hot tubs and talk to God like you would talk to your best friend. Because He is. You are free to laugh and play and watch the stars sparkle against the inky velvet of interstellar space. You are free to live for a living.
Religion is about dealing with your guilt. Relationship is about participating in His glor
y.
Jesus took a beating on your behalf, so you can stop beating up on yourself.
Religion tells us that we need to convince God to accept us by doing the right things. Relationship tells us that we are accepted already.
God does not endure you. He enjoys you.
God enjoys you so much that He writes songs about you and sings them over you according to Zephaniah 3:17. He thinks you totally rock.
And He should know. He is the Rock.
40
THE OPTIMISFIT BLUES
It was still dark when I lifted my iPhone off my nightstand, rubbed my eyes, and mused about how lousy I was feeling. Over the previous days, I had been busy making notes about things I wanted to say in this book, and so I keyed in my unvarnished, honest thoughts.
It was Valentine’s Day, and I woke up alone in my bed. My first thought was that I no longer had someone special with whom to celebrate this day. Dark strange thoughts started to swirl in my brain and a deep loneliness descended. I was depressed about girls, and filled with questions about my career as a traveling speaker, and wondering how much I really meant to my friends. I also couldn’t help but ponder death, thinking about how I was edging closer to it every day I lived.
Sometimes it begins to feel like the universe has grown hostile toward my very existence. I am uprooted and drifting, like Camus’ Stranger. I can’t see hope in this sevenfold horror of outer darkness.
Yes, even an Optimisfit gets the blues now and then.
The worst part for me is feeling alone. When I’m alone with my thoughts, I find that I don’t really like the company. There is a reason that solitary confinement is considered the fiercest punishment. I hate being alone in my own head. Valentine’s Day isn’t much fun for everyone who is unattached. We feel unwanted and we long for some connection. That is what I was feeling when I reached for my iPhone that morning.
What makes it worse is that everyone else seems to be having a great time with the love of their life. All those lovey-dovey Facebook posts and Instagrams. I’m watching their highlight reels about the Beauty of Love and I am stumbling around filled with envy and cynicism.
Like most dudes, it doesn’t matter how lost I am…I still don’t really want to stop and ask for directions.
The only cure I have found for this kind of despair is to rethink what Love is really all about.
It isn’t just about heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and bouquets of flowers. It isn’t just about finding that perfect someone who completes you or at least fills in the loneliness gap.
Because, ultimately, no person can really be the answer for our need for love…except the One who invented it.
The Prime Mover of the universe is Love.
God loves me completely and obsessively. Not for who I might be someday, but for who I am today.
Another beloved person might seem to fill the void of our need for love, but it never really holds up. Only He can really fill and fulfill me.
There is no character in any of Nicholas Sparks’ romantic novels who loves with the kind of passion that God feels toward me. Romans 8 tells me that nothing can separate me from His love. Nothing.
Not my mistakes. Not my lousy attitudes. Not my repeated failures and doubts. Not the dumb stuff I will probably do about ten minutes from now.
He loves me more than I can possibly understand and more fully than I can possibly feel.
I am the recipient of the greatest love the universe has ever known. And so are you.
That’s what every Optimisfit needs to remember on Valentine’s Day.
41
900 YEARS YOUNG
Cameron has a pretty basic theme for his life: Every day is an adventure with God.
One time, Cam was in a restaurant and noticed a woman struggling along with a cane. He was so moved with compassion that he offered to pray for her. By the time he left the restaurant with his doggy bag, she didn’t need a cane anymore.
So yeah, that happened.
He’s the person who taught me that vanilla will never change the world.
He’s like a Navy Seal—of the opinion that anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
Once he told me that he was convinced he would live to be 900 years old, and then be translated up to heaven without dying. He had a twinkle in his eye, but I think he was partly serious.
Sounds like a plan.
Cam isn’t that interested in watching movies, because he is too busy making his own. He is an amazingly talented videographer and we’ve worked together to make little movies for my TV show and YouTube. I love the adventure of letting him direct me.
We do jump kicks at the Matterhorn in Switzerland, handstands at the Eiffel Tower, backflips off old dilapidated buildings on the French coast, and skate along Route 66 at 3 a.m., with our path lit only by flares. We go four-wheeling with my Jeep through an old abandoned water park that is filled with graffiti and litter.
You never know what nutty idea he’ll come up with next.
But it is always an adventure.
When I asked him, in the words of Mary Oliver, what he planned to do with his one wild and precious life, he shrugged as though the answer was obvious: “World domination with my best friends.”
What a world it would be with him in charge.
He loves life. He dances with all the frenzy and wild abandon of King David.
Cam is convinced that part of our mission is to heal the pain, the confusion, and the damage done by this world. He believes what the Bible says about our being seated in “heavenly places,” and he wants to harness the power of the world to come and bring it to bear on this one.
He can do this because he sees himself as invincible: “Jesus said I’ll never die. I’ll take that verse to the bank. I’m gonna live until I’m 900. And that’s lowballing it. So, for the millennium or so that I’m alive I’m going to find anything that isn’t heaven on earth and utterly destroy it.”
That’s a pretty straightforward agenda.
Maybe I can read these words at his funeral.
Oh wait.
Maybe we won’t really need to have one…
42
PETER PANDEMONIUM
I have another hero that I probably should have mentioned earlier. He doesn’t have the intellectual weight of Chesterton and MacDonald, or the fierce zeal of Graham, or the weighty authority of Alexander the Great. (In fact, he is kind of weightless!) But perhaps he adds a nice balance to all those esteemed historical figures, especially since—technically—he isn’t real.
His name is Peter Pan.
To many Optimisfits, he is a kind of patron saint. To those who say that life “isn’t all fun and games,” he reminds us that we’d be better off if our lives were more fun and games.
Peter Pan is the fictional creation of author J.M. Barrie, but his way of approaching life is, in many ways, a very real model for me and my Squad.
Peter and his Lost Boys were always up for an adventure. That is our jam too. He reminds us that growing up is for chumps, if growing up means being sucked into the death-in-life program of the white picket fence in suburbia, the all-consuming, ladder-climbing career, and our very own McMansion and two-point-five kids. We think the American Dream sounds more like a nightmare, and we aren’t signing up for that gig.
Instead, we want to turn our everyday lives into Neverland.
That means bucking the System and sticking it to the man. It means thumbing our nose at everyone else’s idea about what makes the good life.
In fact, we want to take Peter to the next level: Peter Pandemonium.
We are ready to be wild emissaries of God’s Kingdom. To be anointed with faith and trust and pixie dust.
We want to dance footloose upon this earth, surrounded by other children of God who share a taste for what is joyful, childlike, and anarchistic. We want to shake things. We want to rebel against conformity and normality, and let God do something new in and through us.
We say no to the middle-clas
s nightmare and the rule of the aristocracy.
We say no to Jesus-in-a box and paint-by-number Christianity.
Instead, we are ready for God to use us to shake things up, to ignore the norms, and to reawaken our dreams.
We envision a day when suicide is no longer one of the top ten leading causes of death. We want to usher in a freedom that replaces all the stress and anxiety of trying to conform to the System. It is literally killing people. We want to help people feel more at ease with their inner misfit. Perhaps then all the drugs and counseling won’t be quite so urgent. We want to go down in history as the generation that turned things around—that offered people a wild, adventurous, and exciting life of hope.
After all, who made up the rule that we need to assimilate to the hive mind? Why should other people’s agendas take precedence over the still small voice within that tells us we are adored just as we are?
The System is broken.
So why submit to a broken System?
Why take ourselves with such deadly seriousness?
Let’s recapture a little of the positive chaos of the 1960s. I’ve seen the television interviews with the Beatles where journalists asked all the serious questions to help viewers put the Fab Four into a neat little box. But John, Paul, George, and Ringo refused to play along. They cracked jokes, fooled around, talked nonsense, and refused to take their interlocutors seriously. No British act had ever gone on television and used it as a forum to goof around. They pioneered a rebellion against the tight-upper-lip Victorian stoicism that you were expected to display in public. They were in open rebellion to the stuffed shirts and the political power brokers and guardians of the normal. So, Ringo took up his drumsticks and they marched to their own beat.