The following is one of numerous short blogs I wrote for my kids as they graduated from high school. Each received 12 blogs, tailored to each one, in a book.
It’s Jesus
God wants us to live authentically – fragile believers, learning to trust him and each other in relationships intent on love. He wants us out of hiding, acknowledging each other without performance or quotas. He wants us to experience his power healing us as he releases us into a life worth living. This is the Church. This is the Church in the Room of grace!
The Cure, True Faced, 2011, 89.
Scripture
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:34-40
“I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father. John 11-15
Story
I was such a good Christian when I was young. I had always been a rule follower long before knowing anything about Jesus. When I was in grade school, one teacher celebrated her opportunity to tell me to get back in line because I NEVER did anything bad. When I met Jesus in middle school, I transferred by rule-following to my relationship with Jesus. I read my Bible, lead Bible studies, prayed (as long as I stayed awake), went to youth group (more often than you all), didn’t smoke or date bad girls, and even wore a true love waits t-shirt. I judged lesser Christians harshly in my mind. I was an all-star. Why was I such a good guy? I wanted God, my family, my leaders, and my friends to judge me as good. As good as I looked, it was all very selfish on my part, and I still struggled to believe in myself. My older self realized that I needed to rework my motivation. I need a Christianity based on grace, relationship, and love. I needed to stop performing for Jesus and be a Jesus follower. Rather than judge others, I needed to love others. Rather than help people to win points with Jesus, I needed to help out of love. This change has not been easy, and I am still growing into this new soul shape.
Lesson
People spend their lives trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus. I have spent nearly 40 years myself. So reducing my belief in Jesus to a couple of pages is nearly impossible. Yet, I must. You should care about what Jesus cared about, be authentic with Jesus, embrace grace, and cling tightly to the new covenant.
When asked what was important, Jesus said, Love God and People. That is so simple, and yet so hard to do. And it is so powerful. If in every situation, everyone simply did what was loving toward those around them, the world would be revolutionized. Goodbye violence. Goodbye terrorism. Goodbye racism and other ism’s. Following Jesus is conceptually easy. Love Him and love people.
Authenticity is popular in culture, and even more important in Christianity. While Jesus is wholly other than human, we must consider him a friend and relate to him as a friend as well as Lord. Are our interactions with Jesus, in nature, like those with my best friends? Are prayers casual and connecting or stiff and ritualistic? Do we share what is on our heart or what we are supposed to say? Do we try to impress Jesus or do we relate to him? While we should honor Jesus as Lord we must relate authentically to Him as a friend. We should share our fears, our joys, and our deep desires. We are better off sharing with Him a few authentic words than an avalanche of platitudes. When you pray, try pausing first and asking yourself what you want to say to God before launching into a torrent of Christianese and your “usual words”.
I found grace and it changed everything. As good as I had become, I was never good enough. The bar was high and I could never quite reach it… until grace lowered the bar. I had never understood grace. It sounded like the loser's way. I thought grace was only for the weak wannabe Christians that couldn’t cut it. But grace unlocks the door to a true relationship with Jesus. I found out it is okay to not be okay. It is typical in Christian circles to always be “Good” or “Blessed” when asked, but we Christians need to learn that it is okay to struggle and to let people into our lives to see the mess. The mess is covered by Grace. Please know that you are welcome to be not okay, confused, faithless, and lost at times. You can even express that reality without judgment or parental freaking-out.
Strange as it may seem, we Christians need to rethink our relationship with our Bible. It is critical for we Christians to cling to the simpler, more demanding new covenant in Jesus, (love Jesus love people) not the tit for tat old covenant that God had with ancient Israel. The Old Testament tells the back story that led to Jesus. It is awesome, but it is not our covenant any more than a mother is the same as her child. What’s the big deal? The majority of problems Americans have with The Bible center around the validity of the Old Testament. Many people respect Jesus but walk away from Christianity because they can’t accept the Old Testament. Furthermore, most of the great errors of the historical Christian Church, wars, support of slavery, the inquisition, and Westboro Baptist Church, are rooted in lifting scriptures out of context from the Old Testament. It is fundamentally wrong to believe we can lift the “beneficial” parts of the Old Testament and leave the unwanted. If we want the Old Covenant, we get the genocide, sacrifices, and the punishments too.
But isn’t the Bible the foundation of our faith? No. The Christian faith existed for hundreds of years before there even was a Bible. The foundation of our faith is the resurrection of Jesus. If any person dies and brings himself back to life, that is an incredible person worthy of our following. If that one event is true, our service to and love for Jesus makes complete sense. If that one event is false, Christianity falls apart completely. So while the Bible is our guide for life, our source of wisdom, and the way to know Jesus, it is second to the resurrection. You see, Christianity made the Bible. The Bible did not make Christianity.
In your life, your faith will be more solid based primarily on the resurrection of Jesus rather than theology, hermeneutics, the inerrancy of scripture, or the validity of the Creation story. If someone proved tomorrow that Creation, Jonah’s fish, and that Job’s sickness were all allegories, my faith does not have to falter if Jesus rose from the dead. He is the ultimate trump card. In your evangelism, your work will be more successful based primarily on the resurrection rather than “The Bible Says…” A lot more people respect Jesus than respect The Bible. So read the whole Bible, but follow the simpler, more demanding New Covenant only and let Jesus' resurrection be the cornerstone of your life.
Works Cited/Recommended Resources
Stanley, Andy. Irresistible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Reflective, 2018
Hatmaker, Jen. For the Love. Thomas Nelson, 2015
McNicol, Bruce. The Cure. NavPress Publishing Group, 2016
Platt, David. Radical. Multnomah, 2010
Kinnaman, David. UnChristian. Baker Books, 2012.
West, Matthew. Do Something.
Questions
How can you differentiate between Christian culture and Christian Truth?
What do you think about the idea that the old and new testaments are not the same for Christians?
Bono said, “Christians are hard to tolerate, I don't know how Jesus does it...I'm one of them.” What does it look like to be attractive to non-Christians and love Jesus?
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