No living Marine has received the Congressional Medal of Honor for actions in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Until last week. Dakota Meyer's only 23, but he has been awarded this nation's highest military honor. For saving 36 lives during a vicious, six-hour firefight in the mountains of Afghanistan.
It started with an enemy ambush that quickly pinned down much of Meyer's unit. Amazingly, this Kentucky farmboy made a total of five trips into the kill zone to rescue his comrades. And he had to disobey orders to do it. His superiors told him he couldn't go in. He went in anyway. Because people would die if he didn't.
It hit me as I read this story - sometimes you really do have to go "out of bounds" to save dying people. Spiritually dying people, that is. People without my Jesus, who the Bible describes as "without hope" and "perishing" (Ephesians 2:12; 1 Corinthians 1:18). And with so many so far from the world of the Church, so clueless about all the Christian stuff we take for granted, we'll never rescue them unless we "break some of the rules."
No, not God's rules. It's never right to do something displeasing to God in order to bring somebody to Him. I'm talking about the unspoken "rules" of our Christian "cocoon." The fact is, our conventional means of reaching people for Jesus are rescuing less and less. And if we keep on doing what we have been doing, we'll keep on reaching who we have been reaching. And countless souls will be lost forever.
Coloring outside the lines...going outside the box - call it whatever you want, we'll have to go beyond the methodological boundaries that a lot of God's people consider acceptable. We won't see the church as the primary place to rescue people - because most lost folks are - and plan to stay - outside those walls. We'll "seek and save the lost" (Luke 19:10). The new front-lines in spiritual rescue are our living rooms...the gym, the golf course, the locker room, the PTA, the restaurant, the carpool...the hospital, the school events, the funeral home...on our Facebook page, our smartphone, our personal notes.
Lost people don't speak "Christianese" - all those rich religious words church folks speak without thinking. We just can't afford for people to miss our Jesus because we won't leave our "safe" vocabulary and explain Jesus in everyday language. It's time to break out of the boundaries of Christianese to say it so they get it.
If we hope to reach the dying folks through an event, we'll have to go out of bounds and make it a non-religious event. Christ-focused, but non-religious. In a non-religious place. With a non-religious program. Addressing needs and issues that aren't considered "religious."
Paul got in trouble for "disobeying the rules" to help people go to heaven. A lot of the religious folks slammed him for becoming "all things to all men that by all means I might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22). But saving the lost was his non-negotiable - not pleasing the found.
Rescuing always means risking. Including the misunderstanding - even criticism - of people who love the "rules" but aren't reaching the lost. Jesus knows about that. He made the "rules people" very uncomfortable. So they crucified Him. And we were saved.