Jesus didn’t die to make us happy. He died because He loved us so much that He didn’t want us to suffer from the consequences of our sin. Sadly, many of our churches have become clearing houses for therapy literature rather than hospitals for sinners. Trying to be PC, the church often transforms the Bible into a self-help book written to show us how to be successful instead of as a sacred text that tells us we are broken and in need of a Carpenter. Sin becomes guilt for not being happy instead of living contrary to God’s design. Unhappiness requires a therapist, sin requires a savior. Jesus isn’t a safe-space where we talk about our feelings, He is a danger zone where we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. He didn’t ask the man crippled from birth how it felt to be crippled. He didn’t teach him how to use crutches. He told Him to get up and walk. Instead of repenting to the God of the universe we seem to think church therapy is a satisfactory option.

Hold on! When I channel surf the waves of religious television, I hear preachers telling me God wants me to be rich. They tell me if I just planted a little money seed I would harvest a monetary tenfold crop. Doesn’t God want to give me stuff to make me happy? Didn’t God reward people in the Old Testament with material possessions? While it’s true that there were many Old Testament characters with substantial financial portfolios, they were always on a slippery slope that usually ended in disaster. Jesus made it clear that wealth was a major obstacle to salvation, and He even had the nerve to suggest it would be the poor who would inherit the kingdom. He praised those who gave their stuff away and declared that we cannot serve both God and money. The problem with naming it and claiming it is that the very Jesus who had no place to lay His head and was crucified as a criminal makes a very poor poster boy for the prosperity gospel.

When Jesus appeared to his disciples after the resurrection, he revealed the scars of suffering on his wrist, not the Rolex of prosperity. When Jesus approached the poor and afflicted He didn’t bring money, medicine, housing, and food stamps. He didn’t give them better jobs or pay their taxes, He physically healed them and then left them with the benediction, “Your sins are forgiven,” because He knew that forgiveness was the the only thing that would truly make a difference in their lives.

If we make the church about safe spaces then we deny that we are called to live in a very unsafe world. Christianity is appealing not because it provides a shelter from bad things but rather because it equips us to live in the harsh conditions east of Eden. The men I worked with at the Union Gospel Mission had very little patience for self-help literature because they knew that happy thoughts couldn’t save them from their destructive behavior, only a crucified Savior. They had become quite good at naming what they wanted, but found that when they claimed it their lives unraveled. They realized that what they really needed to do was name their sin and then let Jesus take it away. True happiness is possible but it comes from the costly grace of the cross and not the cheap grace of a church therapy couch.

Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate…Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

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