Book Report on Mere Discipleship

Mere Discipleship, by Lee C. Camp, is an inspiring and refreshing call to the radical way of Christ. It gave me a new zeal for taking on the challenges that God has put before me both in my personal life and in my role as an intern in the Discover program. Camp wants his readers to take Jesus seriously in all areas of life. He lays out his vision of discipleship, and then explains what disciples believe followed by what it is they do. Here I will mention a few of his points and how they apply to my life and my experience as an intern.

One of the key parts of the book that stuck out to me was the chapter called “Prayer.” The subtitle is, “Why Disciples Trust God rather than Their Own Calculations.” The idea is that prayer is the action that comes from living by faith and is counter-cultural. When I pray I am acknowledging God as the higher power and therefore acknowledging my limitedness. That takes my focus away from being product-driven. As a disciple I can’t have my focus on being “effective” or even “efficient.” Rather, I am called to be obedient. This applies very much to my personal life as well as my experience as an intern. When I have to make decisions, whether big or small, I can’t make them solely, or even primarily, based on what I think the outcomes of that decision will be. I need to make sure I am being obedient to Christ in my decision. This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t think critically about what I’m doing and the effect it will have. Camp affirms that this is important, but those considerations can never supersede being faithful to the way of Christ. The logic of “the ends justify the means” doesn’t work with disciples.

In my personal life this concept has come up in regards to the way I interact with members of the opposite sex. You see, I’m quite lonely, and I’d really like to have a girlfriend to hang out with and maybe kiss every once in awhile. Now, there are a lot of girls around, so in theory if I was really focused on the end goal of having a girlfriend I could pursue fervently and cast my net wide (to use a rather unfortunate analogy) and it seems quite reasonable to think that I would find a willing individual (perhaps even an enthusiastic one). I’m pretty sure, however, that this would be to have my focus in the wrong place. My loneliness comes from a deep need for intimacy that God has created me with. God knows that I need relationship and it seems likely that God wants for me to find a lady someday, but that doesn’t mean that I can take matters into my own hands. This is especially true since many of the means I consider employing may not be consistent with general principles of what healthy relationship is. To pursue multiple girls at once would develop in myself a mindset of unfaithfulness which could have detrimental consequences in the future when I get married. To pressure or manipulate a girl to date me would be very obviously unhealthy.

Faith and prayer are also a huge part of my experience in the internship. As a leader it is one of my deepest desires to see my students grow and learn throughout this year. I often see specific areas in which a student needs to grow. When that growth seems to be coming slowly I am tempted to grasp at whatever means possible to instruct the student in their ways. Maybe I need to have just the right conversation, or maybe I need to facilitate the right experience. Again, thinking through these different ideas critically is not bad. But when I become anxious and feel that it is my responsibility to achieve a certain outcome in an individual, I am essentially reducing the person and their situation into objects and the solution into a “simple mechanistic rule of physics…” (page 166) Camp clearly explains that this cannot be the way that Disciples view the world.

Another idea that Camp writes about which struck a chord with me is that we cannot separate our Christian lives from other aspects of life. He mentions Luther and his view of the two realms, civil and religious, saying that this view has been unhelpful for the Church. Camp believes that the Gospel and the Kingdom of Heaven are not abstract spiritualized concepts; rather, they include a real-life tangible presence. With that comes the idea that “Christians don’t make good Americans.” Being part of the reign of Christ is always the primary source of our identity, and Christianity shouldn’t function neatly within a category that our governments have placed it in. The idea of freedom of religion assumes that our religion functions on a separate level from the rest of the world, especially the civil realm.

This applies to me personally in a very significant way. When the topic of politics has come up in the past I have often brushed it off saying that it wasn’t something I was concerned with. I understood it to be part of the world and my focus was on the things of God. I’ve come to realize, and this book has helped clarify, that God wants me to be engaged in politics and things of civil significance. I can’t simply say that all systems of government are flawed to justify focusing solely on my own actions within that system. I need to study political theory and other such things and engage in this question of what changes need to be made in order to move in the direction of the world God intended. This truth is very profound and I feel it is also my responsibility to see that Christians around me are coming to the same conclusion.

That brings me to how this idea applies to the internship. I truly believe that the main thing I have to offer my students is my example of what living as a Disciple looks like. I can’t expect them to learn about listening if I spend all my time telling them to listen and don’t actually do it myself. However, I’ve recently been reminded that there is a place for me to express truths that God has revealed to me in a very direct way. Just as Camp sees that Christians can’t simply fit passively into the mold of model citizenship, so must I be a troublesome voice of challenge to my students and the things in their lives that are contrary to the Gospel. And the topic of being politically active is certainly one of the subjects I need to be throwing in their faces at times.

In Chapter 10, entitled Communion, Camp talks about Jesus’ radical economic views. The focus is on the idea of sharing. Jesus doesn’t just want to make sure we are focusing on Him and not making an idol out of money, He also wants us to use the wealth we have to do good. Jesus tells people to sell their possessions and give to the poor, He says blessed are the poor, and He himself lived a life of voluntary poverty. Overall, Jesus had a lot to say about money. I’ve held the view for quite some time now that I need to be sharing my wealth, but reading this brought new perspective and reminded me to be proactive in this area. I give a fairly significant percentage of the money I have, but one thing that I’ve been realizing lately is that I could utilize opportunities to make more money so that I would have more money to give. I could have made two or three times as much money as I did this last summer, but I didn’t because I didn’t feel that I needed it. I didn’t consider that I should try to make more so that I could give more.

This applies to the internship in both a very concrete way as well as a more abstract way. If I were to have some extra cash left over from the summer I could take my students out to coffee, or buy them a meal, or gifts, or do all sorts of other things which would bolster my efforts as a leader. The more abstract connection has to do with being hospitable. I can share my wealth with my students by being more present and giving of my time. I find myself often feeling entitled to having time alone or other forms of “me-time.” While there is obviously a need for this for me to maintain a healthy balanced life, there are certainly times where I take it too far and forget about the simplicity of being invested in relationship with people. When I start to forget that my students are my neighbors and simply think of them as my assignment, there is a problem. The radical “Table-Grace” ethic that Christ has called me to requires me to be a lot more generous than I have been with my time and attention.

Mere Discipleship was a very good book and I highly recommend it. It taught me a lot about life in general as well as about how to be a better intern. I have been encouraged to be steadfast in prayer as it reflects a life of faith which goes against the logic of the world by trusting God to bring about good as long as I obey Him. I’ve been challenged in my view of the kingdom of God and hope to be an agent of change in the lives of individuals as well as in the larger political system I am under. I’ve been reminded that God has blessed me with abundance in material and other ways so that I might be generous. I praise God for these truths and hope and pray that I will not soon forget them as I struggle to finish this term with the attitude of Christ Jesus and a heart that is willing to serve.