I picked up a book while in Brasil that came highly recommended by one of the pastors who was working with us in Ubaúna. I hadn’t had a chance to really get started with it until now. Entitled Artesãos de Uma Nova História [Craftsmen of a New Story], the book is based on the premise: “Please don’t substitute the ‘Go’ for anything.”

The author, Ricardo Gondim, begins, “If you can’t go to Japan, go to the other side of the street If you can’t go to France, catch a bus and go downtown to evangelize on the town square. If you can’t go evangelize in the Amazon jungle, go to the slums, to the prision, to your office to the football stadium. But go. Don’t just stop where you are. Don’t interpret the Go of Jesus in any other manner. Go really means go.”

The worst sickness of mankind at the end of the 20th century is called apathy. The strongest curse placed on Christianity [by Satan] was for it to become a lukewarm option. We have transformed Christianity into something that the Bible never wanted it to become.

Gondim encourages a “militant” Christianity. He looks at movements like Greenpeace. We may not approve of such a group but they do not lack for ‘enthusiasm’ for their cause. In the North Sea, in a dingy, they recklessly rush out to block the path of a nuclear submarine. When they raise their hands in protest on the flimsy dingy, the world’s press is present to record the David and Goliath conflict and everyone admires them. There’s no doubt that the Greenpeace enthusiasts are willing to die a precarious death “for the cause.”

This is the call of Jesus. To follow him is not a party — it starts with a death. He called us for one purpose and that alone. It certainly wasn’t to warm the pews of churches, to give our money to pay someone else to go or to pray for someone else who was going. It was exactly what he said it was: “Go.” We can make all the excuses we want, we can sugar coat it in every possible way, but the bottom line remains the same. “Go” means the same in Greek as it does in Portuguese (or English); when Jesus said “go” he didn’t mean that someone else should do it — if you are following him, he means that YOU must go.

I’m finding myself both being uncomfortable and excited by Gondim’s work. How often do I justify not crossing the room to engage the stranger because that is the pastor’s job? How can I justify keeping quiet when the person I’m talking to is living a life that guarantees an eternity separated from the Holy One? Why do I not become involved, move in circles where the need is great but I’m out of my comfort zone, and assume that everything is ok simply because I did nothing “wrong?” How can I sleep at night knowing that there are thousands upon thousands of people in Wilmington, Ubaúna and everywhere inbetween who Jesus has called me to engage but I am too comfortable and unwilling to sacrifice to go to them?

Makes me jealous of the Greenpeace soldiers.

Craftsman of a new story? Am I? Are we?