“You suck, try harder.”

i haven’t thought of that phrase in a long time. if i remember correctly, it was a quote from marc driscoll to me, way back in the day, in reference to a young baptist emerging church leader from texas (c’mon, you can figure it out). mark’s quote was something like, “he might be culturally relevant, but he’s still baptist; so instead of ‘you are a sinner and you must repent’, it’s ‘you suck, try harder.’”

I think too many of our sermons/services call for responses from people. It almost feels frenetic. “OK, now this week, give up this sin. Next week, give up next week’s sin.” There’s no continuity. That God calls us to action I have no doubt. But I can’t help but think how it makes a person feel when they **have nothing left to give** in response (time, talent, or treasure). To me, calling for response is an American tendency. It’s the ‘human doing’ versus ‘human being’ thing. As Americans, we will never ever feel that we’ve done enough, and it reeks of “playing God”. In contrast, most of the third world is busy preaching about how good it will be when this life is over. Shouldn’t we be more convicted **to be with God**? Everything else can be tainted with our human weakness. But just being a creation spending time with the creator? There’s no better quality time.

In my humble opinion, as human beings (having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge), most of us DO suck, and SHOULD try harder. Why is that a bad message? I agree that this message is often not properly communicated in a motivating fashion, though, at least from many sermons I have witnessed.

I have an interesting question to ask you, Kara: Do you believe that God would ever purposely PUT a chip on your shoulder to “help accomplish great things”? God works in many mysterious and wonderful ways doesn’t he?

And I think what some church followers seem to forget after service, is that repenting is only a first step. Understanding and changing your behavior as a result is the second and, in my opinion, more important one. Isn’t that part of the point of repenting in the first place?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.