It’s time to get real. The core of life is in our relationship with God. Having a relationship with God requires knowledge of who He is. Knowing who He is requires a little work, and the work is never something you think up to do, but it is something He guides you through to bring you into an understanding of who He is.
Isn’t that the way it is with your friends? You don’t get to know them by telling them how to behave and then fabricating interactions with them that substantiate a preconceived notion you have of who they are. You invite them to dinner; you call them on the phone; you play baseball with them; you give them gifts. You get mad at each other and you laugh with each other. As time progresses, you begin to know them more and your interactions move from superficially polite nothings to long walks through the valley of the shadow of death and inspiring flights through the ethereal worlds of the spirit that lift your soul and give you purpose. Your life becomes defined by the moments you have with those people you know and love.
God wants to be your friend. Understand me now, He is God and doesn’t have anything in mind for your friendship but what is best for you – so in that sense He isn’t anything like your next door neighbor or your mom or your best friend. He can’t do anything for you but love you completely and He can’t be anything to you other than God and all that that implies. He is perfect – which is a concept we will literally never understand. In His perfection He is just – the absolute definition of perfect justice; thus he must punish crimes against His order or He is no longer perfect. He is also love – the absolute definition of perfect love. In that He hates that He must punish us with death for the crimes we commit and so He sent His son Jesus. That is the simple gospel for those who don’t know it – the gospel of the Christian religion, but also the pure truth of life.
I should probably stop right there – I am sure it galls some who may read this to hear me saying that the Christianity is the ‘pure truth of life’. But hang in there – it gets better. Its not about Christianity at all – Christianity has, in fact, probably done more in the last century to dilute the pure truth of life than they have to advance it. There, now I have offended both sides of the fence and should probably stop … but I can’t. I am a glutton for punishment.
In our lives, we walk in a world created by the very God I described above. Jesus conveyed to us in the flesh a clear idea of who God is – perfect, just, loving – and He died (taking on God’s punishment that needed to be meted out, like I mentioned above) so that we could crawl out of the hell hole we have created for ourselves in all of the mistakes we have made in our lives and have joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self control…a real life.
This all has nothing to do with Christianity (big C) and everything to do with christianity (little c). The thing that makes the difference is the case of the letter c – the word christianity has at its root the word ‘christ’ which is a greek word meaning ‘anointed one’. In Judaism, the anointing they talked of was the anointing of leadership and they looked to the christ to lead them out of their subjugation to the Romans at the time Jesus walked the earth. The term ‘christianity’ simply means ‘followers of the anointed one’. Our culture and our world has made ‘christ’ and Jesus synonymous, when they most certainly were not – Jesus was much more than just the anointed one. We took one aspect of His identity and made it our religion’s defining term – of course we could have chosen worse aspects of Jesus’ identity such as suffering one, lamb of God, or man of sorrows to identify with; my point is that Jesus was more. I think we are more apt in calling ourselves followers of the Way. This is the core of what Jesus was saying – its not religion; its the Way.
He was life – and the words He spoke were the way to life, which was the way to Him. Kind of circular reasoning; but bear with me. In truth, it isn’t about the word ‘Jesus’ per se either – if He would have been a normal man and spoke the words He spoke, what He spoke would have given us the manual for an incredible life. What is the key to this is that its not about the word ‘Jesus’ but it is entirely about Jesus. The manual to life that he gave us is useless without the fuel of life to keep the engine running – and that fuel is Jesus.
You see, we are all really very much the same in the core of our being. We want life, and that more abundantly. Being molded from the same clay, we all have similar needs. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprising considering our similarities, we all really want the same things – joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self control. These are the things that have lead scholars to develop the theory that all religions in the world came from a single source, far back into the beginning of our pre-recorded history. I would contend that they are partially correct – our desire for joy, peace, patience, gentleness, and self control does have a root cause; because we are all molded from the same clay by the same God that died for us.
The gospel – the pure truth of life – is the most accurate description of the essence of who we are. Notice that that description does not include Christianity (big C). We use Christianity to help us get closer to that identity we have in the gospel under Jesus – its not about the church, the church is about IT. It is not about how much you give, but it is entirely about how much you give – without knowing or caring if anyone is looking.
If you are afraid to stand up in front of an audience and tell them the truth about who you are you are human – but if you don’t come to grips with the truth of who you are in a way that is obvious for all to see you are a demon – and you will never have a part in the full life.
Jesus is about being real – not about Christianity (big C).
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