Every obstacle but one

This class has spent nine chapters asking you to lay things down — assumptions, defensiveness, vocabulary, the instinct to correct, the expectation that people come to you. So it has to end by naming the thing that is never laid down, because taught without this, the last nine chapters are dangerous.

We remove every obstacle except the offense of the cross itself.

What that means

The message does not move. Jesus crucified and risen, calling people to repent, believe, and follow. That is not softened, traded, delayed indefinitely, or quietly dropped because a relationship is going well and you do not want to spoil it.

There is a failure mode on this side, and it is not rare among kind people. Over-contextualization removes so much that there is nothing left to discover. The conversation stays warm and permanently empty. That is not love. It is abandonment with good manners.

The test

One question, applied to anything you are tempted to add, remove, or soften:

Is this essential to following Jesus, or is it merely our culture?

Cultural things may be laid down freely, and most of what feels non-negotiable turns out to be cultural. A dress code is culture. A vocabulary is culture. A building, an hour, an order of service, the version of Bible study you grew up with — all culture.

Faith in Jesus, repentance, love, obedience — those are the floor. They do not move for anyone’s comfort, including yours.

Where the offense actually is

Worth being precise here, because we sometimes protect the wrong thing and call it faithfulness.

The offense of the cross is that you cannot save yourself, and that following Jesus costs you your right to run your own life. That is genuinely offensive to every human being, in every culture, including ours. It always has been.

What is not the offense of the cross: our music, our clothes, our jargon, our schedule, our politics, our preferences about how a room should be arranged. When people bounce off those, nothing has been defended. Something has just been lost.

What you take away

Understand them first — really understand, on paper, by name. Cross the distance yourself instead of waiting at the border. Lay down everything that is merely ours.

And then, having removed every obstacle you could, do not remove the one that was never yours to move.

Recite this

Remove every obstacle except the offense of the cross itself.

Try it this week

Take the two-column list you made last chapter and check it once more. Is anything in the “merely our culture” column actually essential? Is anything in the “essential” column actually just your comfort? Fix the sorting.

I will re-sort my list and name one thing I am laying down, by ________________.