Someone once said that the hymn writer got it wrong when he penned,

"Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine."

What he should have written, had he been more scripturally accurate, was,

"Blessed disturbance. I am Christ’s."

To be a disciple is to always be disturbed. Disturbed by the pain and sorrow in this world. Disturbed by the agonies caused by greed and selfishness. Disturbed by the lonely and homeless. True disciples of Jesus can never sit smugly back while the rest of the world screams out in pain.

There is a strong movement among many spiritual pilgrims to try and obtain a kind of nirvana, a blissed-out state that has one removed from the cares and problems of the world. Many religions, both ancient and modern, seek such a divorce from reality and devise all kinds of sophisticated theologies to justify such removal.

Recognizing that I am not to judge the value of such attempts, I am qualified to discern if they are Christian in substance and they are decidedly not.

They may be healthy. They may be life-prolonging. They may be socially beneficial. But they are not in the tradition of the one who came to live among the homeless, feed the hungry and heal the sick. They are not of the God who became flesh and dwelt among us.