The Benefits

When I was a kid, I rarely thought about things like health insurance. There’s this really funny video running around the internet right now satirizing some differences between the generations. It starts with a girl pointing out that folks born in 2002 will be old enough to purchase and consume alcohol in the US this year (2023). She sticks her ID to her forehead and starts singing Nikki Minaj’s rap in the “Bottoms Up” song where she lists like five different alcohols in a row. Then, the video cuts to a millennial man (“1992 babies”) with his insurance card stuck to his forehead asking if he can get some medical procedures and a therapist, among other things. Finally, it cuts to a Gen X woman with her AARP card stuck to her forehead (“1982 babies”) asking if she can get some senior discounts and things of that nature. Look it up, I hope it makes you laugh.

If you have not had the pleasure of job-seeking post college, this will be illuminating for you. If you have, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. As a fully functional and totally-responsible-for-yourself-adult, you often search for a job with a salary that helps you pay your bills and benefits. That health insurance that I never thought about when I was a kid is a benefit. Some employers even tack on vision and dental insurance in addition to some sort of retirement package. Benefits are above and beyond your normal salary. They are something that the employer adds on to your take home pay as a way to take care of you as an employee and, at times, entice you to work for their company.

This is not a blog post about health insurance, though I’m sure there are those out there. My mind doesn’t like that neighborhood, so we are about to take a hard right turn into a corn field. 

I’ve been around long enough to have seen a few different methods of telling people about Jesus. If it’s not obvious by now, I’m a person who lives their life, as best as I can, in line with the truth found in the Bible and modeled for me in the life, work, and teachings of Jesus Christ. Some people would call me a Christian and, while I’m comfortable with that term, many aren’t, so I felt the need to clarify. Anyway, there are as many methods of teaching others about Jesus and inviting them into a relationship with him as there are people. I’ve seen folks use a method called Apologetics (this one is for really smart people who like logic, facts, and sound arguments). There was the “Romans Road” method which was very popular in the early 2000s. Much like the “Romans Road” there is the “one verse Gospel proclamation” based on Romans 6:23. I’ve also seen many methods that don’t really have a specific name, but you can tell what people are getting at as they speak and teach. 

One such method is what I’m going to call “Benefits Evangelism”. It’s akin to the “Prosperity Gospel”, so if you’ve heard that you’ll be familiar with this. People often do this without realizing what’s happening or what they’re doing. Their desire and goal is to get people to accept Jesus’ scandalous work on their behalf. They care about the folks they are talking to and they only want good for them. Their method of getting them there, though, creates some problems that I’ll discuss a little further below.

In “Benefits Evangelism”, you’ll hear a lot of talk about what life will be like after you follow Jesus. There will be a lot of emphasis placed on the relationships that people have after they start following Jesus. People will talk about their church or specific faith communities and emphasize how great it is to follow Jesus because you get to know such wonderful people. In this type of evangelism, there’s also an inordinate amount of talk about the dramatic ways in which lives have been changed by Jesus, instantly, easily, and permanently.

Now, before you close your browser, hear me out. I think that there are an immense amount of benefits to following Jesus. My life and the lives of many that I love are changed forever. My life is better than it would have been otherwise. I have purpose, hope, and a reason to never give up, no matter how hard my life gets. But. If the only reason that I’m following Jesus is because of the benefits to me personally, my discipleship to him will be short lived.

In the accounts of Jesus’ life, we have a record of a metaphor that he used called The Parable of the Sower. Let me set the scene for you. Jesus has gained a huge following. There’s so many people trying to get to him that his own family can’t even get close enough to check on him in the passage right before this one. He leaves the house where he’s been staying and goes to sit down by the lake and teach the MASSIVE crowd of people. Instead of performing some miracles or talking to them explicitly about God, he tells them a story. Jesus is like this- he wants you to think and really understand what he’s saying. He also wants to speak to a wide variety of people: men, women, children, religious leaders, his disciples, teachers, regular workers, old, young, and any other qualifier that you can think of. The story goes like this:

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop- a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear. (Matt. 13:3b-9; NIV 1984)

If you’re not familiar with growing plants, you need to know that a common method of sowing A LOT of smaller seeds is called the broadcast method. Basically, you prepare your garden and then you go out and, as evenly as possible, scatter your seeds around. Then, you’d take a rake or other tool and stir the dirt up once more to make sure the seeds were buried. This farmer is broadcasting his seeds in the place he has prepared for them. Notice that there are four places where the seed lands- the path, rocky places, thorns, and good soil. How the seed grows, or doesn’t, is largely dependent upon where it lands. That on the path is eaten by birds, that on the rocks starts strong, but withers in the sun, that near the thorns also starts strong but dies for lack of nutrients, and, finally, the seen in the soil prepared by the farmer grows as it was intended to.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to say this week, this story came to mind because it teaches us that not all who initially respond to the invitation to follow Jesus make it to the end. The seed is the “message about the kingdom” (Mt. 13:19). The different places where it lands represent people’s souls. The things that happen to destroy the seed/young plants could be any adversity from the devil himself (v. 19), difficulty associated with being a Christian (v. 21), or regular life pain and suffering (v. 22). 

You can use this story to teach many different things (that’s why Jesus is the MASTER teacher), but I want to focus on the things that kill the seed because I think that another reason people don’t follow Jesus for the long haul is that they became more interested in the benefits that he offers them than Jesus himself. I think that, in an effort to make following Jesus more palatable, many well-meaning Bible teachers and evangelists focus on the “good things” that come with following Jesus and they fail to mention the devil, difficulty associated with being a Christian, and regular life pain and suffering that are sure to come, even to those who follow Jesus. It’s like a recruiter for a job telling you all about the benefits package, but leaving out the best part- your salary.

In John chapter 16, Jesus says, “in this world you will have trouble”. There’s just no way to an easy life, even one with Jesus. The world and everything in it has been marred and scarred by sin and death. There’s no escape. That’s why Jesus had to go through death. The only way to a life free of pain, suffering, enemies, persecution, and difficulty of every kind is to follow Jesus to the grave.

And you won’t do that if you’re hung up on the benefits.

For several years now, I have worked diligently at my current job. I’ve wanted to have more responsibility and more hours, but it’s never really panned out. It wasn’t until this fall that I finally got health benefits. Not having health benefits associated with my job has created many inconveniences and financial difficulties for my family, but I continued to do my job because I love it. I know that this is what I’m supposed to be doing and I was willing to pay the price and deal with the inconvenience of it. If I were hung up on the benefits (and, in my case, even the salary) that came from my job, I would have quit what I was doing long ago. The same is true about my relationship with Jesus. 

I follow Jesus for his sake. I follow him because his story is the only one that makes sense out of my life, gives me hope beyond it, and it’s too good to be true. If I were to follow Jesus because of the wonderful friends I would have, I’d have quit after college. If I were to follow Jesus because I thought he would make my life easier, I would not be alive right now. If I were to follow Jesus because of the great faith community I thought I would have, I’d also be SEVERELY disappointed. If I were to follow Jesus because I thought he would turn me into the best version of myself, then I’d give up yesterday.

Jesus is worth following because he’s good. He loves us. He went through death so that we could live. There are benefits to following him, just like there are benefits to a job. But you won’t keep following Jesus if you love the benefits more than you love him, just like you won’t keep working a difficult job for the sake of the health insurance. You can get health insurance another way. You can get friends, an easy life, and even some measure of life change without Jesus. But those things won’t satisfy your soul. They won’t keep you going when you lose everything.

It’s got to be him. Nothing else will do.