Robinson Crusoe Christians
How many supports do you need to keep you following Jesus? Constant streaming of Christian music? The best preaching on the internet? Annual sojourns on the Gaither Caribbean cruise? Do you need it?
What if God would rather show off, in your life, how he can bring a saint home with almost no provisions?
As a boy, I loved the story of Robinson Crusoe, the sailor stranded on an island for 28 years. The whole fun of this tale is set up the morning after the shipwreck when Robinson spies his abandoned ship run aground on a shoal some ways out to sea. For a few days, Robinson gets out to the ship on his homemade raft and salvages a few things before the ship breaks up in the surf and is lost forever.
Readers are given the list of what he gets off the ship. Every item he retrieves holds a special awe because we know how precious each thing will become. What makes the story crackle with adventure is how short that list is. The author could have ruined the story by making that list too long. Does Crusoe have the wits to survive with these few items? Some biscuits—better eat those before they go bad. A gun! Wow! But can he make the ammunition last? A barrel of rum! How long will that last? A bit of sail! That could make a tent (if he’s smart enough).
I think it was Eugene Peterson who first pointed out to me that Crusoe’s list demonstrates why the Christian life can be such an adventure. Following Christ drives us to keep asking the question, does God have the wits to get me home with the bits of provision he has given me?
I have access to a Bible. I have a Christian friend. I hear a sermon on Sunday, whatever the pastor was able to come up with. Not much, but it’s not nothing.
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But I will only complain about this if I’m missing the point. The point of following Jesus is not to show that God can make me a spiritual glutton for 28 years at an all-inclusive island resort with servants plying me with rum and roast lamb all day. The point is to show what God can do with little. In this, God will be glorified.
To me, this seems like a better posture toward the resources I see before me. My small group Bible study feels very different if I see it as one of a few things salvaged off a doomed ship. Wow! One evening Bible study with a few friends! Can I make that last if that’s all I’m going to get?
Wow! One evening Bible study with a few friends! Can I make that last if that’s all I’m going to get?
Here’s a thought: has COVID-19 been a Robinson Crusoe moment for the church, an attempt by God to deprive his gluttonous children of all but the barest necessities? Did you survive on what you were given? Give glory to God. Now let’s use those skills to be thrifty Christians, able to make much of meagre, meagre provisions.
Another thought: would our pastors have a healthier place in our churches if we all had a Crusoe mindset? Pastors are not here to make us spiritually obese. Pastors are here to give us a few biscuits each week and a small barrel of rum every 28 years, spiritually speaking. All we need each week is someone to say to us in plain speech, “God is great, God is good, and God is real. Now go out there and live on that.”
Can you make it home on that?
