Taking Following Jesus Seriously Kind of Ruins Your Life

“You’re, like, the best person I’ve ever met.”

Doctor Who S11 E4, ‘Arachnids in the UK’ (2018)

You know, I really can’t recommend this whole Christianity thing if you want to be happy in life.

 

I assume this lady’s pose implies happiness, rather than just a fondness for right angles or something.

I really can’t recommend it if you want high self-esteem, faith in humanity, an optimistic outlook on the future, a general sense of satisfaction and fulfilment, a schedule filled with enjoyable activities, or a shot at inner peace. In good conscience, I really can’t. Taking following Jesus seriously kind of ruins your life. Completely ruins your life, in one sense.

It ruined my self-esteem because I had to give up every last sliver of a notion that I was a good or even vaguely OK person, and instead acknowledge myself as totally foul and corrupt at the very core of my being. I had to strip myself of every commendable quality or achievement that I might want to attribute to myself, call them all lies and nothingness, and throw them away. I had to comprehend that there is, objectively, nothing good to be said about me, only bad. I had to learn to consider myself the most deplorable, unworthy thing in existence.¹

And it ruined my faith in humanity because I had to acknowledge that everybody else belongs to the same category I just described too. I had to think of the interminable roster of human atrocities, that spools ever longer with every passing day, as a set of case-studies not of what happens when exceptional circumstances allow evil to prevail despite the better judgement of a righteous majority, but of what humans are all fundamentally inclined towards.²

And it ruined my optimistic outlook on the future because I had to resign myself to the inevitability that, because humans are fundamentally bad, human society is never going to progress into any better, fairer version than we’ve already seen. I had to denounce the whole beautiful world as rightfully bound for complete destruction by holy fire. I had to expect that what’s ultimately in store for this universe, when the patience of its righteous Judge eventually runs out, is an unimaginably destructive rain of one terrifying calamity after another, and after that, total cosmic demolition.³

And it ruined my general sense of satisfaction and fulfilment, because I’m uncomfortably aware that the entire cosmos is thoroughly messed up and en route to destruction, and I simply can’t find any real contentment at all in something so poor and so transient. It regularly occurs to me that everything I encounter in the world is mere dust, mere breath, pointless, vanity of vanities. I know that the world to come will be infinitely, infinitely better, that it will be perfect and real and permanent and, best of all, I’ll know my God face to face, and oh crikey, I yearn for that more than I know how to express.⁴

And it ruined my schedule filled with enjoyable activities, because the situation being what it is, the only activities really worth bothering with are ones that somehow help to get or keep people on the trajectory that’ll enable them to experience the joy of the next world instead of just the destruction of this one. I can no longer justify spending as much time as I used to on things that I do actually really enjoy, and not only that, but I’m charged to undertake acts of service towards believers or unbelievers that I really don’t enjoy as well.⁵

And it ruined my shot at inner peace, because doing the things I ought instead of the things I didn’t requires me to wage constant war on my natural self. The same temptations conduct assaults on my soul over and over again, and over and over again I have to beat them back; all too often they gain far more ground from me than I’d like. Every moment I’m conscious is a moment in which there’s no respite from the war – or else I’m not fighting hard enough.⁶

 

The Christian life is a war. An appropriate picture for Remembrance Day here.

I’d be happier if I could just grant my flesh what it wants instead of denying it for the sake of my sanctification. I’d be happier if I could deem myself Good Enough as I am and not trouble myself with striving to be more like my Lord. I’d be happier if I could set myself some overall life-goal slightly less impossible to achieve than being holy as God is holy, instead of existing in a conscious state of perpetual failure to achieve that goal.⁷ I’d be happier if I could fill my time with things that gave me pleasure and feel no obligation to do anything difficult or unpleasant or awkward like, I don’t know, attempting to explain the gospel to someone. I’d be happier if I could believe that the world was destined for some fate less horrific than the one the Bible describes. I’d be happier – oh blimey, wouldn’t I be so much happier – if I could imagine a better destination than that for the people I dearly love who have not, as I write this, repented and placed their trust in Jesus.

So yeah, I really can’t recommend this whole Christianity thing if you want to be happy in life. Taking following Jesus seriously has made me sadder, more distressed, more cynical, less satisfied. It’s messed me up something rotten.

It’s also been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Permit me a Doctor Who analogy (go on, indulge me; after all, we’re halfway through the new series and the programme hasn’t been this reliably good for a decade). The Doctor’s companions this series didn’t initially have much choice about joining Team TARDIS, having been accidentally teleported into deep space and obliged to work their way back to Sheffield from there, but at the end of the fourth episode, Arachnids in the UK, they all make the deliberate decision to forsake home and family in favour of adventures in time and space. The Doctor reels off a list of reasons why they might want to reconsider – she can’t guarantee their safety; they won’t come back the same – but it bounces ineffectually off a decision already firmly made. “Be sure,” she says. “All of you, be sure.” And they are. The precise reasoning for that varies between the three of them, but it was Yaz’s that struck me the most, when she said to the Doctor, “You’re, like, the best person I’ve ever met.”⁸

And I thought of Jesus telling the crowds that following him meant all sorts of unpleasant things, not just giving up home and family, not just risking danger and becoming a different person, but on top of that putting one’s very self to death. And I thought of how, when the teachings got tricky, an awful lot of people who had been following him reconsidered their decision, and upped and left. And I thought of Jesus asking the twelve men who constituted his inner circle whether they wanted to leave too. Be sure. All of you, be sure. And I thought of Simon Peter’s reply: “Lord, to whom shall we go away? You have the words of eternal life, and we have come to trust and know that you are the holy one of God.”⁹

I mean, it’s potentially a bit stronger than You’re, like, the best person I’ve ever met, but I think it’s fair to suggest that the gist of the thing is pretty similar. Look at all the unappealing things that are going to happen to you if you come with me, says the protagonist; are you having second thoughts? And the response is, no, because you, you are worth it.

I’m not pretending to have suffered severely for the sake of the gospel or anything – honestly, I’ve hardly suffered at all – but it’s impossible to believe the gospel without it costing you something. I’m privileged enough that being happy in life was something I stood a pretty good chance at; taking following Jesus seriously has cost me that. So why do I still recommend it? Because Jesus is the best person I’ve ever met and so much more.

I am the most deplorable, unworthy thing in existence, but Jesus subjected himself to the full extent of his Father’s right indignation against everything deplorable in me so that I might be made worthy of a share in his kingdom.

All humans are fundamentally inclined towards evil, but Jesus lived a life of faultless love and obedience, the perfect fulfilment of God’s instruction, not only as an example for us but so that we might be gifted the right standing before God that he justly obtained as if we had done so ourselves.

The world is rightfully bound for destruction by holy fire, but Jesus has promised that those who believe in him are not appointed to endure that, but rather to be brought into his presence and remain there forever and forever.

Everything I encounter in the world is mere vanity of vanities, but Jesus gives meaning to all of it even now, in that it will all of it be used for God’s glory and the good of his people, which is to say to fashion us ever more closely after the likeness of our Lord.

I can no longer justify spending so much time on things I do actually really enjoy, but Jesus is basically the be-all and end-all of all creation, and no loss of earthly pleasure will look like anything worth mentioning next to the glorious inheritance he grants his bride the Church to share with him.

There’s no respite from the war in me, but Jesus has already won the final victory over human sin and its consequences, so that I can be confident every blow struck for good is a blow struck for the winning side, and one day sin will be removed from me altogether and war will give way to perfect peace.

Taking following Jesus seriously completely ruins your life. To be blunt, it kills you. But the result is that Jesus lives in you instead, and he’s, like, the best person I’ve ever met and then some. I really can’t recommend this whole Christianity thing if you want to be happy in life. But if you want something of infinitely greater value than being happy in life, there’s literally nothing I recommend more highly.¹⁰

Footnotes

¹ I am not going to provide links for every Biblical allusion in this post, because there are just too many of them, so you can settle for one linked point per paragraph, or possibly two if I’m feeling generous. For this one, have Paul’s comments on how every commendable quality and achievement he might have alleged in his favour amounts to, quite literally, a pile of crap: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Philippians+3&version=ESVUK.

² Check out God’s comments about the nature of humanity after the Flood, for instance: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+8&version=ESVUK.

³ I dare you to read through chapters 6-9 of Revelation in one go: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+6-9&version=ESVUK. Though for the ultimate destruction in fire thing, your best bet is 2 Peter 3: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Peter+3&version=ESVUK.

⁴ ‘Vanity of vanities’ as a phrase of course comes out of Ecclesiastes: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ecc+1&version=ESVUK. And the promise of seeing face to face is out of 1 Corinthians 13: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians+13&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Paul urges his readers to make the best use of the time twice, in Colossians 4:5 and in Ephesians 5:16: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians+5&version=ESVUK. As to exactly what that entails, well, go digging for context, why don’t you?

⁶ Once in a conversation with a dear friend, she told me I sounded like Paul in Romans 7: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+7&version=ESVUK. I think it must be one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever been paid.

⁷ Peter quotes ‘be holy for I am holy’ in 1:16 of his first letter. Its original context is actually from a list of kinds of animals the Israelites were or weren’t allowed to eat, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lev+11&version=ESVUK, but Peter illustrates how the principle can be expanded.

⁸ A cursory search of YouTube hasn’t yielded that part of the scene, but you can have the following bit that constitutes the very end of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSyk-cm26s4.

⁹ That’s out of John 6, as I expect you already knew: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+6&version=ESVUK.

¹⁰ Yeah, I’m getting even lazier with the links now … bits of scripture I had in mind when writing that last section include 1 Thessalonians 5:9, Galatians 2:20, the last few verses of Ephesians 1, and our old favourite Romans 8:28.