How is it that so many people claim to be Christians—something like 70% of Americans and roughly a third of the world’s population—yet when we look around on a daily basis, we see so few people who actually seem to be exhibiting the attributes of Jesus to those around them?

With those kinds of statistics, we should be seeing more unified communities, more acts of kindness, and more prayers over one another wherever we go.

It should be a regular occurrence to have someone tell me about God’s love in the grocery store or ask to pray with me about things I’m struggling with in the line at a restaurant or simply smile and ask if they can buy me a meal and talk during lunch at work.

Why is the radical love of Jesus not the norm when so many people in America claim to follow him?

It seems odd to me that so many people label themselves as Christians but don’t follow Christ.

To follow Christ is to walk with him, taking steps He takes and moving how He moves. It’s closeness and obedience all at the same time. Jesus called it “abiding,” and when we walk with him like this, it produces fruit in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I’m not a fan of the doom and gloom perspective, but I can tell you just by looking around on social media that 70% of Americans are not producing that kind of fruit.

So where are we missing the mark as a predominantly Christian society?

This question especially bothers me because this was me for years.

I did the church thing. I said the salvation prayer. And I lived what I considered to be a generally acceptable life. I focused on doing good—on “winning” in the area of morality—whatever that looked like in my life at the time. Yet I still felt empty.

It seems odd to me that as a society, we’ve reached this place where it’s okay to acknowledge the difference between good and evil, but we’re not comfortable walking with God.

We’re fine with promoting the moral equivalent of “winning” and we can talk about what’s right and wrong all day long and no one gets uncomfortable. But if we talk about walking with Jesus with no other agenda, people get uncomfortable.

The reason we’re okay with morality is because we want to know the score. No matter our worldview, we need to be able to place ourselves above or below those around us. We need something to condemn (evil) and something to chase for our own fulfillment (doing good). In our minds, in order to sleep well at night and feel good about ourselves, we need to win morally. Or so we’ve become convinced. Ironically, the opposite is true.

Walking with God, on the other hand, strips us of control. It’s uncomfortable because it can’t be manipulated to make us feel powerful and good about ourselves.

I live in the Bible Belt, where religion is more prevalent, but I would venture to guess that if I asked 10 random people if they believed in God, 9 out of 10 of them would say yes.

Pew Research Center backs this statistic up, actually. They found that 9 in 10 Americans believe in some sort of “higher power”. (https://www.pewforum.org/2018/04/25/when-americans-say-they-believe-in-god-what-do-they-mean/)

In the same study where Pew Research found that 9 out of 10 Americans believe there’s a God, they also found that only three quarters of Americans say they talk to God, and a meager 3 in 10 Americans say that God talks back.

This is especially alarming since prayer and reading the Bible are outward expressions of walking with God, and it’s only in that process of walking with him that people’s character changes for the better.

We seem to prefer to believe in him while ignoring a relationship with him.

We would rather work to do good so we can feel good about “winning” morally and forgo actually changing our hearts for the better.

This is exactly how I lived my life for 20 years.

In fact, I still can drift into this way of thinking from time to time. We all do.

I’m only pointing out the obvious problem that we have where society is okay with the idea of God—or, at the least, some other higher power that gives us a reason to do good so we can earn a sense of rightness—but they don’t dare to take it anywhere past that beyond what we can control and manipulate.

That’s like walking to work every day and telling yourself each day that you know you need a car, you know you have the money to buy a car, and you even have a pretty good idea which car is the best car out there, but for whatever reason you just keep walking to work every day. If you know the car is available and you know it makes sense, then why avoid the car? In the same way, most of the world knows that God is there, they just avoid him.

Let’s be honest...

The idea of God makes us feel better.

We instinctively think or know that since we’re alive, we have intelligence, and natural laws are in place to sustain life on Earth, then whatever higher power created all of this wouldn’t dare let us perish. As long as we are generally doing good things, and the good things we do outweigh the bad, we think we’re good to go. We slip into this mindset that says we just need to balance doing good with enjoying life, and that’s when we’ll be successful in God’s eyes.

We see this mindset in every form of modern media. Movies, TV shows, music, advertisements, and everything in-between are filled with stories and imagery of people living their lives having the most fun they can have while not quite violating the moral line that we all draw in our heads.

We love the idea of “good people” who aren’t too uptight. Our minds tell us that as long as they’re not using too much profane language, they aren’t too mean, they aren’t too provocative, and they aren’t too selfish, then they’re good. Mix that with just enough edginess to make them fun, and that’s who we want to be.

That’s what we strive for—to do good for the sake of feeling good and being successful, but to have enough fun along the way to make it worthwhile.

Is this all life is about? Are we really only here to do “good” and have as much fun as we can in the process without crossing the line?

It’s no wonder we end up frustrated when we fail in pursuit of this impossibly idealistic balance. It’s no wonder role models have breakdowns. It’s no wonder parents explode on their kids. It’s no wonder suicide is on the rise. We’re all comparing ourselves to a standard of good we’ll never achieve, then trying to grab as much joy as we’re able to have in the process without going too far. It’s an impossible balance, and it’s time we stop.

There’s an urgency to what’s going on around us, yet we’re too busy enjoying ourselves without a care in the world. Some people will flat out pretend that God isn’t there, but that’s a minority of people. Most people acknowledge that God is real, but they just won’t trust what they can’t understand.

So the question is, why are we not not grabbing onto the one thing that makes sense? Why is it so difficult for us to just accept help and walk with God with no strings attached? I think there are a few reasons for this.

Why people avoid knowing God

Reason #1: They want more fun with just enough “good”.

Plain and simple, we see all the good things we can have access to, and we decide to go for it. We look at what we consider an “ideal” life and we fall into the trap of believing that we have life figured out. We see this balance going on between having fun, attaining things, and making memories while doing just enough good to keep us in good standing. We think that if we chase the comfort and the joy from what life offers and we just keep doing good things, then everything will work itself out.

We see other people doing this and we think we can do the same balancing act. It seems like something we can achieve. This was where I was for over a decade, and I think we all find ourselves drifting to this place from time to time.

The truth was, I liked going out and partying. I liked living life on my own terms. It’s fun, but it gets really tiring after a while, and then it’s downright depressing. Once you figure out that all the fun in the world doesn’t fulfill you and doesn’t truly make you happy, it’s a huge letdown. Despite all the joy you’ve tried to hoard, you find yourself empty.

It’s funny because you hear it from so many people. From celebrities to athletes to entrepreneurs, everyone says this exact same thing: that money and good times do absolutely no good when it comes to finding joy and happiness in life, even when you couple them with being a good person. But many people keep on chasing it.

Reason #2: They want more “good” with just enough fun.

Another reason I think people avoid walking with God is because they feel inadequate.

All throughout history, human beings have tried comparing themselves to God only to fall drastically short. Every time God physically spoke with someone in the Bible, they fell down. They shielded themselves. They were blinded by His goodness. What else are we left to believe but that God is too good for us to be around?

Psalm after psalm and verse after verse are filled with the most flamboyant expressions of who God is and how wonderful He is. If we’re not careful to view Scripture through the lens of awe, admiration, and personal dignity rather than through the lens of insecurity and pride, we’ll take the Bible to be a measuring stick that we can never come close to achieving, and that will lead us to a place of self-depreciation.

Our experiences with the truths in Scripture—good or bad—have very little to do with what we actually read and more to do with how we approach it. If we approach the Bible as a measuring stick and a constant reminder of how lowly we are, then all we’ll ever see ourselves as is low and unworthy. That’s not God’s heart, and that’s not His intention for His Word being given to you.

The Bible is filled from Genesis to Revelation with reminders of the fact that we are God’s children. If you look at the Bible through a lens of dignity, it’s impossible to walk away feeling less than worthy.

Moses murdered a man and ran away from the crime. He was a man filled with fear and insecurity, yet God “would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11). How is that possible? God is exalted and His ways are higher than ours, so how is it that He could stoop so low as to speak with Moses like a friend?

I get it. I know where your mind’s going...

We’re not Moses. He was “special.”

So what about Paul? Another murderer, yet Jesus came down and spoke to him then chose him to do some of the most important work in human history.

What about Gideon, who was a coward and a serial doubter?

What about David, who slept with his friend’s wife and then had him murdered? God brought himself down to David’s level and met him in His brokenness, and David continued to walk with God.

Jesus called His disciples friends.

Scripture says that Jesus humbled himself and put on human skin so that we could know him. Jesus said eternal life is “knowing” God. You cannot tell me that the God of the universe doesn't humble himself to walk in front, behind, and side-by-side with us. Anything that goes against that view is simply not Biblical.

I grew up hearing that in Heaven we would all sing praises to God forever and ever. Honestly, that sounded terrible to me at the time. I heard that God created us for His glory, not ours. Honestly, that sounded like a very selfish thing to do. But when you see yourself as inadequate, you resist God’s exalting and resent what’s being lifted up.

We all receive information through our own lenses, and over and over again, I heard Bible passage after Bible passage through the lens of my own insecurity and self-deprecation. I didn’t see myself as worthy, so I embraced lowliness as a state that God intended me to be in as a way of justifying my misbeliefs about my own self.

Is God infinitely powerful and wonderful? Yes. Does God want us to be humble? Absolutely. But ask yourself: if God is all-powerful, why does He need me to be humble? After all, God needs nothing from me. With that being the case, perhaps God’s desire for a humble heart isn’t at all for His benefit but for ours. Maybe, just maybe, there’s something He’s trying to give to us that we can only receive when we stop relying on ourselves.

The irony is, the overly humble, self-deprecating Christian is actually more prideful than the person walking with God in dignity and confidence. The self-deprecating person is trying to maintain security and peace with God at all costs, and they are willing to completely debase themselves to do so. They’re thinking more about themselves than they are God. God doesn’t need them to think less of themselves in order for him to be exalted. He runs the universe. Your humility helps him none.

God is love. He’s in absolute control, He needs nothing, He’s slow to anger, and He’s filled with compassion. His desire for your humility is intended for you to let go of control and walk more closely with him. It’s only by humbling ourselves and letting go of our own path that we will walk confidently and boldly with God thereby accessing the abundant life that’s only found in the walk with him.

Let me tell you something that I hope sticks:

God wants your humility to fuel your dignity. He wants your lowness to drive your exalting.

Jesus said, “the humble will be exalted.”

The paradox of that statement is incredible and should bring you great hope.

The Greek word for “humble” means to be lowly.

Think about it...

Where’s the only place you can go if you’re on the ground? Up.

How disheartening is it then, that many people cling to the dirt their face is in because they fell into the trap of believing that their purpose was in the dirt?

Why would a good and loving God want you to stay there?

He doesn’t want your sacrifice. The Bible makes that clear. He wants you to look to him so He can exalt you, but He only exalts you when you’ve lowered yourself to a place where the only way to go is up.

When we’re standing up on our own (which is pride), God refuses to elevate us. It’s like a child who wants their Dad to throw them up in the air but won’t release themselves into His arms to be lifted up. Releasing themselves to their father is an act of lowliness and humility, but immediately afterward they are elevated to a place they could have never reached before. In other words, lowliness leads to elevation. That’s God’s intention. That’s His heart.

When we approach God through that lens, then we see that walking with God brings us back into life the way it was meant to be—life to the full, not life in complete suffering as a slave to what we think we should be doing. Then we don’t see praising God for eternity as something we have to do because we’re nobodies who deserve nothing better, but rather as a natural byproduct of walking with a God who withholds no good thing from those who walk with him (Psalm 84:11).

Reason #3: They run from the unknown

Whether we’ve tried doing good with just enough fun or having fun with just enough good, the results are eventually the same: frustration, anger, hopelessness, and doubt. The way out is to walk with God, plainly and simply. To know him and allow him to know you. It’s so simple and sweet, yet we don’t do it, and I think a third reason for that is uncertainty.

If we let go of doing good, how can we know that we’ll “make it to Heaven”? If we let go of pursuing fun, what if there’s nothing better on the other side? We love control, and both doing good and having fun are mechanisms of control.

Listen, there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing good or having fun. But when we pursue them solely for fulfillment, we’ve given our hearts to them and made them an idol. We all do this at times, so don’t get down on yourself. Even in writing this book, I find myself fighting the urge to put my sense of self-worth in the words on this page. It’s a battle that’s common to all people.

But this is the only fight we’re called to fight— - the fight of faith. We’re called to trust. To walk. To know God. That’s it. Everything else flows from that. We’re called to simple closeness with God. We’re called to balance our ambition with our submission. We’re called to let go of control and walk with God in dignity. That’s the whole sum of our purpose.

It’s so freeing and yet so frightening, because doing so requires letting go. The child releasing themselves into their father’s arms has no way of knowing completely what will happen next. They simply have to trust the father’s character and know his heart, and then let what happens next rest in His hands.

That’s much more difficult than trying to control our destiny through good deeds and good times, but it’s what we’re made for. We’re here for the unknown because it’s only in the unknown that we will cling to the One who knows. His power is perfected in weakness. So let go of Christianity and embrace walking. It’s the only journey worth taking because it’s the only journey there is.