Being a “Christian” — or whatever name people of Jesus-style faith prefer to call themselves (e.g. “believers” or “followers”) — is not always easy or fun. It gets complicated, difficult and confusing to live “like Jesus,” and at times it just doesn’t seem worth the effort. I know this to be the case because I’ve been a Christian my entire life, and it’s been difficult the whole time. I get annoyed by preachers who teach about Jesus and preach about what it means to be one of his followers by making the Gospel into a rule book and Jesus is the ultimate example that we are supposed to imitate in every way, all the time. Call me a heretic, but I just don’t think that’s how it works, plus it’s not possible. Jesus was God. I believe that to be true. Jesus was a human. I also believe that to be true. Yet just because Jesus knew what it meant to be a human being doesn’t cancel out the fact that the dude was also the Almighty, and so even though he understood the tension we feel living between the temptations to do bad even though we knew we should do good, he was God incarnate, a perfect human who was without sin. Except of course, when he went to the cross to bear the punishment of all our sin (past, present and future); and all those sins were crucified with him–in him–so that we do not have to face the punishment (death) that we deserve.

This is the end of my sermon,

and the beginning of someone else’s.

Vince Antonucci is author of the book I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt (Baker, 2008). The book came out today, but Relevant Magazine ran an excerpt from it a few months ago under the title “When Faith Gets Boring.” I think it’s fantastic and I thought it’d be appropriate to run an excerpt of the excerpt here (an excerpt-squared, as it were). Please take note that any ellipses are my own, so whenever you see dot-dot-dot (or “…”) it means that I skipped over something to shorten what I’m sharing here. You can get a copy of Vince’s book on amazon or read the full excerpt on Relevant. Here’s a little sample…

Excerpt of an excerpt from I Became a Christian and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt by Vince Antonucci (Baker, Relevant)

Walking through the front door of a church building [for the first time] was like passing through a portal to a different world. So much was unfamiliar. For the first time I heard about “propitiation,” “puppet ministry” and “potluck suppers.” I stood for “fellowship,” knelt for prayer and sat on a hard wooden bench (which they called a “pew”). I saw more polyester in one morning than I had my entire life. I experienced church snack time, which consisted of little pieces of cracker and small plastic shot glasses of grape juice. A man explained that we would be singing hymns 11, 52, 17 and 63. I almost yelled out, “Bingo!”

But it’s now 17 years later. I’ve gotten married. I have two kids. I’ve gained a few pounds. And I’ve gone from having never walked into a church to having 17 years’ worth of Sundays in church buildings. And with all that experience (not to mention the few extra pounds) under my belt, I can tell you that there is something very familiar about most of the Christians I’ve met. Unfortunately, it’s not that they remind me of the people who populate the pages of Scripture…

But when I look around at Christians today, I see people who just wear a T-shirt for an adventure they’ve missed out on. We’re missing the journey. We’re stuck in the same dull routine. We’re missing out on the joy and fear and laughter and doubt and mystery and confusion of following Jesus, of taking great risks for God, of praying dangerous prayers, even of being spiritually attacked…
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