"Crazy Love"

    I found Francis Chan's book, "Crazy Love", three years ago as I was searching online for Bible study material that I could use for our small group. Up to that time, I've never heard of Francis Chan but I became curious and wanted to find out more about him because he was of Asian descent and because my mother's maiden name was also Chan. At one point, I wondered if he was a distant relative.

    Little did I know that God would use this book to wake me up from religious complacency. Francis Chan wrote like a prophet. He accurately describes a common spiritual malaise experienced by many Christians today - a "half-hearted, distracted, partially committed, lukewarm" kind of Christianity. That was me. I was a regular churchgoer, tither, and ministry leader. I lived a good and moral life. My life outside work revolved around involvement in many church programs and activities. But I did not truly enjoy God nor fully love Him. I thought that I did. My works seemed to show that I did. But when I examined and looked honestly inside me, I knew that I didn't. Don't get me wrong, I believed in Jesus Christ but I found it too hard to live this faith consistently. It was frustrating!

God used the book to show me what I was missing :

1. I had an inaccurate view of God.

   Francis Chan admits that he grew up believing in God without having a clue what He is like.

I called myself a Christian, was pretty involved in church, and tried to stay away from all of the things that ''good Christians" avoid -drinking, drugs, sex, swearing. Christianity was simple: fight your desires in order to please God. Whenever I failed (which was often), I'd walk around feeling guilty and distant from God. In hindsight, I don't think my church's teachings were incorrect, just incomplete. My view of God was narrow and small. 

-Crazy Love, p. 20

My experience was the same. The Bible shows us that we have an amazing, awesome, eternal God who loves us with an eternal, outrageous love. God loved us rebels and we are unworthy of his love. But God relentlessly pursued us to reconcile us back to himself through Jesus Christ his Son. I did not fully understand this in my life, hence my awe factor of God was small. I was living a "works righteousness" Christianity by generating a righteousness thru my own strength and effort so that God would approve of me. I thought that's how God loved me. Hence, I missed God's tremendous worth and power in saving me from the very thing that I was doing. I lacked the Biblical understanding of his grace. My inaccurate view of God and his love led me to miss the true meaning of the gospel.

2. I assumed that I was good soil.

   The concept comes from the parable of the sower that Jesus told (Mark 4) and also in a simile by the author of Hebrews (Hebrews 6:7-8). In college, I was a student leader with Campus Crusade for Christ. I led Bible studies and organized mission trips. I was actively involved in church. I experienced blessings from God but that did not necessarily prove that my heart was a good soil that produced good fruit. Instead of fruit, I was producing thorns and thistles and I was choking. Thorns are anything that distract us from God and chokes the fruit of righteousness that grows out of faith in Jesus Christ. We're choked by too much of the good life. This is especially true in the Western world where people are able to earn higher income and enjoy the blessings that come with economic prosperity. This comfortable lifestyle ends up becoming toxic by making us complacent. We become the sort of Christians that love and obey God so long as he doesn't impinge on our lifestyle. All this talk about radical Christian living, self-denial, taking your cross, self-sacrifice, and suffering for the gospel are major turn-offs. We'd rather hear preachers and read books that teach us how to be more comfortable, influential, and successful and have God be a benefactor of all these niceties of life.

    I was glad that the Holy Spirit had removed the scales in my eyes such that I could see my spiritual condition. Logically, the next question for me was,"What must I do?" It was through this book that I got introduced to John Piper. Francis Chan quotes him,

The critical question for our generation-and for every generation-is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?

-Crazy Love, p. 100



That question penetrated deep down my soul and exposed where my affections lay. The antidote to lukewarm, selfish, comfortable living is love. Francis Chan writes,

And isn't that what God wants of us-to crave this relationship with him, as we crave all genuine love relationships? Isn't that what brings him glory- when believers desire him and are not merely slaves who serve him out of obligation?

There is often a great disparity between how we feel about faith and how we are meant to feel. Why do so few people genuinely find joy and pleasure in their relationship with God? Why do most people feel they have to either pay God back for all he's done (buy his love) or somehow keep making up for all their inadequacies and failures (prove their love)?

-Crazy Love, p. 101

Because it's in our nature to always want to be in control of everything, we try to control even our faith. We try to muster more love for God and end up loving him out of obligation. Living this way, makes Christianity a boring, guilt-ridden chore!

    I recall praying something like this :

God I need you to help me to love you. I need your help to love my wife, children, parents, siblings, and my friends genuinely. From now on, I want to pursue loving you and delighting in you. Show me how awesome you are. Open the eyes of my heart to see how wide, how deep, and how great is your love for me.

   Right around that time, I started blogging. My first post was a reflection of his bigness as told by the universe that He created. The second post was my futile attempt at measuring his love that had no bounds. The third post was a listing of who I am in Christ - something I first learned way back in my days with Campus Crusade for Christ and one that I must remind myself daily. These were my first steps to falling in love with Jesus Christ to depths that I have never experienced before.

   Gradually, comfort was no longer living the good life but tasting and seeing that the Lord is good! Delight was no longer just a day at the movies or at an ice cream shop but became meditating on the Word of God regularly, wanting to know more of God and his infinite worth. I became dissatisfied with settling for less on Sundays : sermons that make God seem small and man big, a worship experience that seems to say to God, "Lord watch me worship you, you're gonna like it," rather than exalting God's majesty and greatness. For the past three years, I have seen this law at work : if I replace Jesus with something or someone else of lesser value, I will never be truly satisfied.

   On second thought, I am related to Francis Chan through our faith in Jesus Christ. We're brothers!