Tuesday, August 28, 2007

I Found Jesus!

Michael Vick's speech, a heartfelt speech about the remorse that he felt, was quite good. He expressed a sense of humility and wrong doing that he had not expressed before. Good for him.

The thing that bugged me a bit was the, "I found Jesus," line.

I am obviously not opposed to people finding Jesus. Good, excellent, great. My sense, however, is that it's often a cheap line. It seems that when a celebrity is in trouble and rehab is not an option or a solution, they suddenly find Jesus. "Hey, I messed up but now I'm in rehab so I'm wonderful," is replaced by, "Hey, I missed up but now I found Jesus so I'm wonderful."

As most people who work at rehab and most people who have successfully been through rehab will tell us, is that showing up is great, but rehab is a long, painful, and difficult journey. The first step is showing up----but it's only a first step.

The same is true of discipleship. In reading much of what Mother Teresa wrote in her letters, discipleship, for her, was a long, painful, and difficult journey. Just saying, "I found Jesus," is just showing up. It's a great first step, but I'd love to know several things about Michael Vick.

Did he start going to church? Does he own a Bible? Does he pray more than just when he needs something? Has he given money away to charity, most especially the poor? Has he worked in a soup kitchen or anything like that?

Just finding Jesus because finding Jesus makes us 'feel good,' or 'look good' to others is not really finding Jesus. I hope for Michael Vick's sake he really did find Jesus and has begun walking down a genuine path of discipleship. But don't boast that you found Jesus until you've traveled down the road a bit.

1 comment:

Ann said...

I like a line I once heard as a response to "I found Jesus!" It was, "Wow! I didn't even know he was missing!"