The Bachelor is a
popular reality TV show where a single guy gets to, through a drawn out
process, choose one out of 25 young women to be his girl. (Like it’s opposite The Bachelorette.)
If you’ve ever watched this show, you’ve either laughed or experienced an upset stomach at the ridiculous way the contestants act toward each other. In the spirit of jealousy, gossip, and deception, you watch a winner-takes-all war. The one who succeeds does so by trampling on the backs of the losers.
Have you ever felt in competition with people around you? Have you ever felt that your sense of value was contingent on winning salvation—on Jesus picking you?
You and I can be like some of the contestants in this show. Sometimes we think that Jesus is just going to pick one bride and we have to be the most intellectual, the most missional, the most concerned with injustice, have the most Christian experience, etc.
We aim to be the chosen bride when he’s chosen all of us—we are the Bride of Christ!
Now what would Jesus be like if he was the bachelor?
Jesus would break the rules of the game. He would listen to them. Then perhaps he would tell them how precious and intricately they were made, how indescribably the Father loved them, and then he might end with his cross. He would challenge each contestant to die to themselves.
Jesus changes the way we live with others. As followers of Christ, we are called to an extremely new unnatural, counter-cultural, and radically selfless level.
We lose to win.
Phil
