What rail did we take bringing us off track in discipleship? Our dialogue has become splitting hairs over issues of Christianity rather than a discussion and presentation of a person, Jesus Christ. Our ‘Christianity’ has become our doctrines and thus it is more important to swear allegiance to our doctrines than to our King. Jesus has become just another Buddha who said on his death bed to his disciples who were concerned on how best to remember him; don’t remember me, it is not my person but my teachings that matter.
What matters in Christianity today is apparently having the right answers to the right questions. Whether you even believe them isn’t the issue, you just have to profess to believe them or worse, commit to things you don’t even profess to believe.
Get enough of the right answers you are in, too many wrong answers you are off to the bad place. Which ones do you have to answer correctly? Do you have to even believe your answers are true or just have them? Can you just profess them, even if you don’t believe them? Can you just commit to them even if you don’t profess to believe them? How many wrong answers can you have? Which ones are worth more points? Will they be multiple choice, fill in the blank or T or F? To which did the ‘thief’ profess?
Ask yourself, what is the importance of believing that Jesus is Divine?
Is it to just to have the right answer? Is it to get points to add to the score to make the cut? Is it to have superior knowledge from which to manufacture bullets to hurt others badly in lively debates?
Surely you are thinking, no, it isn’t anything like that at all. It isn’t to have the right answer. If I believe Him to be Divine, to have come here and established a beachhead of divine life in this little far away place we call earth, then I am going to relate to my world differently. More importantly, I will relate to Him differently. I will make following Him into life the most important thing as I learn how to become the kind of person who lives the life He described.
I will evaluate the world in which I live and the situations I go through from a different perspective and will come to see this life I live as one lived in a completely different world than the one described by the lords of knowledge.
Maybe, in this world then, it is safe to tell the truth. A world where His advice not to worry can be taken seriously. Maybe I really do live in a world where He reigns and rules and will see to my care. Perhaps I can forgive those who mistreat and abuse me. A world where He can spread before me a table right in the presence of my enemies and I might even say to them, 'Why don't you sit down with me for a bite to eat'.
Isn’t that richer than being right?
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True story:
ReplyDeleteAn elderly woman came up to me after church this week and said "I have led lots of people to the Lord in my life. I even led a good friend of mine to the Lord who is Christian Scientist"
I said "wow...really?"
She retorted, "Oh yes. I led her through the sinner's prayer and so now - even though she is still a practicing Christian Scientist - she said the prayer and now she'll go to heaven when she dies"
I honestly didn't fully grasp the british term 'gob-smacked' until then =)
Oh to have the right answers.