Excerpt: Brian Robbins

An excerpt from -

The House on Neptune

by Brian Robbins ('97)

The night before he was crucified, when an armed mob came to arrest him, Jesus restrained his disciples from defending Him. They still did not understand that dying had been his plan all along. If it hadn't been, he certainly wouldn't have needed their help to stay alive. "Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" he asked (Matt. 26:53). He knew more about power than they ever would. He also knew that, when it came to the Father's purposes for humanity, power was not the point. Love was the point. Love leads us to put others first, to serve them. And so he called his followers to this incredible task: Give your lives away, as I have, for the sake of others.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness (Php. 2: 3-7).

When I was a teenager, the word "radical" was very popular. Today it has been replaced by much better words, like "phat" and "dope." Back in the late 80's no one wanted to be called a fat dope, but to be called "radical," or simply "rad," was definitely a compliment. If someone or something was radical, it meant that they were fresh and new, not afraid to be completely different from what was normal. My youth pastor caught on to this, and began challenging us to be "radical" in our Christianity. To be a radical Christian meant that we were sold out to Jesus, that God had control of our entire lives, not just certain safe parts of them. It meant that we were not afraid to be completely different from the people around us. He even suggested that biblically there really was no other way to live the Christian life. We knew he was taking things a little too far; you only had to look at the adults in our church to see that is was perfectly possible to be a Christian without getting so carried away. But it was an interesting thought.

Then again, what Paul said to the Philippians was pretty radical. "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit." Don't do anything out of self-interest. If we assume that what he meant by this was that followers of Jesus really aren't supposed to do anything out of pride or a desire for selfish gain, then it becomes clear that the Philippians were going to have to be radically different from everyone around them. They were going to have to re-orient their lives, away from themselves and toward God and others. They were going to have to get out of bed in the morning with the attitude that God had left them on this planet to benefit someone else, the same attitude Paul had already demonstrated toward them. It would be hard, because it would go against their own human nature and everything they were learning from the culture around them. But it would be the only way they could really claim to be followers of Jesus.

And so this is what Christians are supposed to be: an army of invaders, bent on merciful service to the dying world around them. Like Jesus, we are sent to this planet, away from the home we love, to convince people of the compassion of our Heavenly Father, and invite them to join us on the return journey. We are called to enter our cities, our jobs, our schools, our churches, and our world as He did, not to be served but to serve. We are given bodies that look like those around us, so that we can move in and out of society and implement our strategies of grace. These bodies hide our true identity as citizens of a distant land, aliens on earth. Our mission is not quickly accomplished, and we face the very real danger of forgetting who we are and why we have come. If we lose our focus on heaven, we begin to think that perhaps we are here for our own good, and we look to this place to satisfy the desires of our soul. Soon, we are consumed with our own needs and wants, and forget about those we are here to love.

Publisher: Xulon Press.