Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Foreword

Preface

1. Learning to do life

2. Becoming human

3. Copying Jesus

4. Vision for life with God

5. Prayer and life

6. When life is hard

7. Why go to church?

8. Learning to love

9. Healing the creation

10. What shall I do with my life?

Preface

‘Christ did not die to make us Christians. He died to make us human.’ So said Archbishop Oscar Romero who was shot dead, martyred for following Jesus in the face of government opposition.

The great discovery for me in recent years is that following Jesus makes us more human, not less so. Even though he says things like ‘whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it’, he does so in the context of how we most truly discover ourselves. Jesus invites us to live life well, really well, far beyond contemporary society’s bland definitions and assumptions about the good life. He gives us both virtue and exhilaration together – usually regarded as mutually incompatible. He offers us deep feeling and clear thinking. He invites us to a quality of life that is stronger than the grave itself. He sees things very differently from most of us, and much of his teaching is acutely uncomfortable. But, he insists, this is the path, the only path, to life that is really life – the life of God.

This book is neither a manual of church practice nor an exposition of the Christian faith. It is an invitation to follow Jesus, to trust him enough to pattern our very lives on his life. It is a call to give him everything, because, he says, that is the only way to discover ourselves.

The book has been percolating away for four years now, and much has happened in the writing of it. I wrote it first as a booklet for the church where I am privileged to be the Rector – St George’s, Holborn, in the centre of London. When IVP kindly asked me to adapt it for a wider audience, I was delighted to do so. There then followed two immensely difficult and painful years. Friendships with dear friends were tragically lost. The church went through a firestorm. I myself became ill, and was signed off work with depression and anxiety. I thought I was losing everything. It was a dark period, but I am coming out of it. And I feel more strongly than ever that the teaching of Jesus, which I have tried to highlight here, is not something that belongs in a religious sub-culture, but a message for the world. It works – in the fires, as well as in the sunshine. This is life – not just superficial recipes for self-actualization or calm, but a real, profound, invitation to true life, to God-life.

The book is structured around a progression: from the personal to the corporate to the cosmic. It starts by looking at what it means for us as individuals to be called to follow Jesus Christ, and then relates that to how life in the church might fit in, before examining our role in God’s plans for the whole of his world. This progression is born of the conviction that to follow Jesus is to follow him right into the heart of what God intends for the whole universe. A true following of Jesus can never be left at the purely personal level; it must involve God’s plans for the renewal of all of humanity, and through this renewed human race nothing less than the liberation and transformation of the whole created order.

But the personal–corporate–cosmic progression is also born of the conviction that the potential for global impact is present from the very beginning for each of us as individuals when we follow Christ. It is our spiritual DNA. Growth as disciples will necessarily involve growth into the church, and from there into the world, unless growth becomes stunted or twisted.

(There are three aspects, or stages, in following Jesus.)

Each aspect of following Jesus is integral to the next stage and grows out of it. But each aspect is also fully present as potential in each preceding stage. From the beginning we need the two parallel convictions: to follow Jesus is to enlist in something that has consequences for the whole universe and the whole human race; and, at the same time, this huge picture can only make sense, and can only be entered into, through our own lives being changed individually, and as we, one at a time, get involved in God’s church.

This is where the focus lies of what it is to be a liberated disciple. It does not mean that we will necessarily be happy and fulfilled, or that all our dreams and aspirations will come to pass. But it does mean that we will be liberated from all our lesser concerns as we find the source, joy and meaning of our lives in God and his cosmic plans in Jesus Christ.

Dante’s inferno had ‘Abandon hope all you who enter here!’ inscribed over the gates of hell. I therefore should like this book to say the opposite. This adventure of following Jesus, of trusting him and copying his life, is the most hope-filled adventure that there is.

John Valentine

Holborn, central London