God, forgive us for using our systems of religion to hide from you.

What would happen if a generation embraced something greater, giving all of themselves away?

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We're losing today's generation, not because we're making Christianity too hard, but because we're making it too easy. Now when Christianity started, it was a radical movement. A movement that changed the world of the early church. People can get behind something like that. We've got to stop selling easy faith--do this and you'll get this. It's never been about houses and cars and soccer practices, our biggest worries being what bill to pay off next. Here in America, we have this idea that we're supposed to be happy first, but no, Jesus doesn't send us that message. He never promises a life with less pain and less worry, a life with secure jobs and more money, a life with a gym membership and a dog.

We're creating something different, something not following Jesus. We say the first step is accepting Jesus into your life. Your life. That's a fine theology, but it's not based on Jesus (if that's who we're claiming to follow). Gandhi said once that he loved Jesus, he just wished Christians would take him more seriously, because everybody knows what Jesus was teaching except for Christians.

Jesus doesn't ask to be invited into our hearts, to enter into our lives. Jesus calls us to come and die. Our old selves? Dead. Our nice houses and new cars? Sold. We're to come and kill everything--our wants, our goals, our securities, our comforts, our possessions, everything. If we say we want to follow Jesus, then we're entering into lives of sacrifice and poverty and homelessness and suffering. If anything, a life that follows Jesus is one of more pain. However, if we say we want to follow Jesus, then we're also entering into lives of purpose and peace and love and freedom. And ultimately, if we say we want to follow Jesus, then we're entering into a new plane where change is finally possible.

Jesus lived an extreme and radical life, a life of sacrifice and poverty and homelessness and suffering. Does he call us all to be that radical? Yes he does, because radical people can change the world. But radical people are the only ones who can change the world.