We saw last week that my desire (hopefully it has become yours), is to charge my family to have a more global perspective of God’s purpose as a way of ridding them off the tribalistic or even racist mentalities we see across the country and the world at large.
I see my fellow Kenyans and others across the globe straining themselves for things that have no eternal joy. They may have a deep sense of social justice in them but there is a need for deeper motivation than social justice. What we need and what I want my children to learn is not human rights/ or tribal or racial rights or even gender rights! I want them to know death! Death! Death! That death is the only true way to realizing true life; the best way to express life; the only route that leads to life! Death! “For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise, you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:7-11). This thought is not a nicely cooked thought from my tiny knowledge. It is the thought of scripture. Unless there is death, there is not a hint of true life. I want my son and daughter and all under my influence, too know this route- the dying route. That they may be set free sin- the sin in their heart that wants them to be tribal, racial or what not. They need, as I do need daily, to be reminded that they are dead and lost as humans and that no other religion has any sort of promise for them; no other god has any hope for them; no other commitment is higher, bigger, brighter and better than to know Jesus who died and is calling them to death that they may share in his life. This is what I want them to know deeply. That the only right that stands through eternity is NONE! For if they learn death then they’ll learn true life.
People kill and plot for killings; people bribe and use shortcuts for job opportunities. For what? For money and materialism and tribalism! Oh, that they may know the folly of being too simplistic as to fight for their tribe (they are tribeless for they cannot claim either of what is in their blood). They need to learn to fight within themselves for their death that they may own life! True life.
This is the tribe of the called. A tribe that has no root to ancestral mythologies of how we came into existence but in firm belief in the truest account of human existence recorded in the Holy Bible in Genesis. A tribe that knows how their filth was sorted out in the mighty floods and ransomed by the grace of God through the life of one Noah. A tribe that survived Sodom and Gomorrah and Babel by the grace of God through the man Abraham by the amazing act of grace by God. A tribe that was grafted in after the Israel failed to express the life they were to them by the death of Christ on the cross. A tribe that knows no race, color, tribe or class. A tribe that speaks vernacular language as a display of heavenly beauty yet mostly speak 1 Corinthians as a scout reciting the Scouts creed! A tribe that has caught a glimpse of the renewal talked of in 2Corinthians 5:17 and have been consumed by this doxology in Romans 11:36 that, “For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.” A tribe called Disciple! Not by extension or association but by heart regeneration! The Tribe of the Called.
I used to think of myself as a Kenyan. I am Kenyan no doubt. But that is too small a title. It is a limited title. It is a selfish title to some extent. Why? Because it is too small a thing to be known as a Kenyan and a tribal Kenyan for that matter. I am a Disciple:
My scope is global.
My base is local.
My call is eternal.
My condition- viral!
Oh, that my two children may see this as I relate with their mother and their uncles and aunties and other wanna-be relatives. Oh, that they may see the love of Christ raised above all other gods and beliefs in our home. Oh, that they may notice their need for a new tribe and that like me, they would have a global scope, a local base, an eternal call and a viral condition. Maybe this way they, as I pray you would also adopt, may be able to be more than social justice proponents but ambassadors of the great God and King- Jesus Christ, the author of the Tribe of the Called!