Walking With Jesus: The All-Or-Nothing God

About ten years ago, Stephen Curtis Chapman wrote a song that I very much liked called "Dive", in which he sang: But we will never know the awesome power / Of the grace of God / Until we let ourselves get swept away / Into this holy flood / So if you’ll take my hand / We’ll close our eyes and count to three / And take the leap of faith / Come on let’s go!

I've always loved the imagery of "diving" into a relationship with God -- when you dive into a pool, there's none of this toeing the water nonsense to see if the temperature is to your liking. You jump in, and it's all-encompassing. It's everywhere around you, and there's no going back.

One of my college friends posted a great quote that from C.S. Lewis about our All-Or-Nothing God: "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important." Or, in the words of Miyagi in Karate Kid, "Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do 'yes' or karate do 'no.' You karate do 'guess so,' *squish* just like grape. Understand?"

Many faiths and religions try to straddle the middle line in an effort to lure more people in -- make it accessible, don't make it too offensive, and certainly don't stress that this is an all-encompassing way of life. It's just a fashion accessory, to slip on and off when you feel like it.

God is a self-described "jealous" God (Exodus 20:5) -- He wants ALL of your life, not just a bit, not just part, and not even most. He's willing to give you everything for free -- eternal life, purpose, rewards, forgiveness, guidance -- but He's not willing to compromise on what He wants from you either. He doesn't want to share you with the world, to be "another" god in your life; He wants to be your All-Or-Nothing.

A great example of this is in Matthew 19:16-30. A rich man who was also pretty religious comes up to Jesus and asks what he has to do to get eternal life. Jesus knows that this man's love of money is competing with God for importance in his life, so Jesus tells him to give all of his riches away -- a test, to see if this man could give it all up to dive into God without any distractions. Yet the man couldn't -- he walked away sadly. God was important to him, but not as important as other things.

Diving into the All-Or-Nothing God is absolutely terrifying to consider. It's a huge risk. It demands everything from us. It certainly will change our lives. It might force us to get rid of things we love that distract us from our walk with Jesus. It might make some people like us a lot less. It might cost us dearly.

And yet, as C.S. Lewis said, it is of "infinite importance" -- nothing is more important than whether we surrender ourselves fully to God or not. There really is no middle ground, no matter what you may like to believe.