Ok, maybe not MORE than anyone else in the world, but more than maybe you might think.
It’s official. Jesus is about as common as Justin Bieber or the Dallas Cowboys in my part of the world. Not exactly where I imagined myself, to be completely honest. I always saw myself living somewhere else, somewhere where people weren’t like me. I’ve always just wanted to go. Truth is, I always just knew I was supposed to go. It was just deep down in me to go ever since I was a little girl. And go I did.
About 4 years ago, I met the man of my dreams. The best way I can describe it was I heard God tell me to go. I didn’t go to some unreached people group to share the Gospel and teach English. I didn’t move to some remote place in Africa. I found myself head-over-high-heels in love and smack-dab in the heart of the Bible Belt.
I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t baffled. Why would God call me to live in a place where there’s a church on every street corner? I had spent years defending what I believed in, and suddenly it was culturally and socially acceptable to be a Christian.
You would think that The Gospel of Jesus would be flourishing in Bible Belt USA. But I’ll be honest; my impression is that it isn’t. I mean, it is in places, sure. But I get the feeling that Gospel is so common here; it is almost forgotten. Many people attend weekly worship at churches, but functionally worship and put hope in lots of different things. The reality is that the Bible Belt needs Jesus more than ever before.
In my opinion….
6 Reasons Why The Bible Belt Needs Jesus More Than Anywhere Else In The World:
1. We have all the answers.
One thing is sure, nearly everyone in the Bible Belt of America has heard of Jesus and has probably attended church much of their life. Truth is, people who live and grow up in this part of the country are generally friendly, nice, and genuine. They have such great advice. I get in a friendly conversation with a stranger nearly every day.
The problem is when it comes to Christianity; good advice about being a good person isn’t the Gospel message. Jesus didn’t come to make us good people. We were in such need of saving, that He needed to make us new people.
When it comes to the Gospel, Jesus is the answer for every hurt, every sin, every problem, every joy, and every bit of your worship. Bible Belt Christianity tends to look a lot like behavior modification. But knowing Jesus is so much more.
2. We struggle to have authentic community.
People in the Bible Belt are some of the most loyal, faithful people I’ve ever met. People here are loyal to their people. They are loyal to their families. They are loyal to their friends. The problem is that this can cause a sort of “cover up” , “smile and wave” mentality. Dirty laundry stays under the bed. People will truly go out of their way to be put together, composed, and sunny-side-up in public. These kinds of relationships certainly foster tight-knit community, but are they authentic?
The Gospel isn’t performance based. It is grace based. That means that Jesus is real about your failures and sins. He doesn’t ignore them or hide them. He loves you in and despite them. He loves you to the point that “He who knew no sin became [your] sin, so that in Him you might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus did that for you.
Authentic Christians presenting an authentic relationship with Jesus would change this culture. Grace and love would abound, and this ugly performance thing could finally die.
3. We have no hope.
The Gospel message is that we are saved “by grace through faith.” The Bible says elsewhere, “Now faith is being sure of what you hope for…”. Human nature is to look outside of one’s self for hope. People will draw the reason for their lives and their identity from wherever they put their hope and faith.
When I look around, I see so many people putting hope in things that do not last. People are basing their lives and identities on fading things. Things like beauty, money, relationships, spouses, comfort…etc. weren’t created to give us what we are looking for. True hope is reserved for the One person who has given us grace and faithful love, Jesus.
4. We can’t find Jesus in this mountain of Moralism.
In the Bible Belt, it is acceptable and expected to be a good person. Churches become full of good people, because let’s face it Christianity will make you good. Often times our churches become about good advice for good people, and somehow somewhere we lose Jesus completely.
The Gospel is not about how good you become. The Gospel is not about you becoming a better, more righteous, more acceptable person until God is close to you. It’s not about our efforts at all.
The Gospel is about a God who came down out of His glory and comfort into the middle of our messed up world and messed up hearts. It’s about Jesus loving us so much that He became our sin and took our punishment, so that by accepting his grace through faith we become a new person.
We can’t accept the grace and love of Jesus until we give up on becoming something by ourselves and our Moralism.
5. Jesus has become like Waldo.
The commonness of Jesus in our society has made Him everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Jesus can become like Waldo. Everyone is so busy in his or her own lives, that we become apathetic in our search for Him. Even worse, we become apathetic about displaying Him to the world. Suddenly this story with His name as the title, written out in His blood, is just not important to share. He becomes so unimportant and hidden in our lives that we don’t even point Him out to world around us.
The Bible Belt needs Jesus. The Bible Belt needs people passionate about Jesus.
6. If we really got it, we could change the world.
This is so important. In this place where Jesus is common, think what could happen if people grasped the Gospel message. Think about what could take place in the world, if this region of the world stopped just adding in Jesus to their lives. Think about what kind of outbreak could take place, if we here, where it is acceptable to talk about Jesus, got the true message of Jesus! When we finally allow Jesus to change our hearts, He can change our world.
I agree with this, but I have one slight variation to make. Yes, it would be quite powerful for everyone here to love God to the full extent of their abilities, but not everyone here is strong enough for that. A lot of what we hide in our fakeness and plastic smiles is just how messed up we really are. Shouldn’t we help ourselves before we help others?
Jesus preached the “individual” relationship with God, not the group relationship. Christian fellowship is meant to provide support to each other, but more than anything, it is meant to begin community building. But God wants the individualized, personal relationship with each of us. I totally agree about the moralistic attitudes. It is the psychology of external control. “You should do that.” “I should do this.” However, this is just another mask.
We all feel out of control of our lives at some point or another, whether we are or not, and this feeling is really bad. We attempt to control each other and we put on these plastic smiles because we are so close to giving in to our frustrations, our weakness, that this is the last remaining vestige of control that we feel we really have. It is like a band-aid over an open wound. If we were strong enough to take this band-aid off, we would.
Until then, we are so sick that our lives require individual attention. We are too sick to help each other.
This post is so relevant. I could not agree more with what you have said through out the entire post.
I would like to take a moment to respond to what Rita Jan said in response to your post. I think the mindset stated is very common among people I know. That being said, I would ask why do we think we need to be perfect or as you stated “help ourselves”? Where do we get the idea idea that we need to be perfect to help others? I do not recall (but please correct me if I’m wrong) the Bible stating that we need to have everything together before we can help others. Christ does not expect us to be perfect- he expects us to be willing.
If we, as Christians, still feel we are “too sick” to help others then we need to be honest with ourselves and ask for help from our Christian community. In the end, regardless of our state in life we have been called to serve those around us.
I also find myself drawn to sinners like he was, because there’s no convoluted self-righteousness among us sinners! The “saved” tend to bore the piss outta me!