- Nov 23, 2022
- 6 min read
"The Christian life is a moment-by-moment miracle, lived by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes the joy and peace of Christ and reproduces them in and through our lives. He takes the love of Christ and manifests it through us."
Robert McQuilkin
“Ye masters, doe vnto your seruants, that which is iust, and equall, knowing that ye also haue a master in heauen. Continue in prayer, and watch in the fame with thankesgiuing, Praying also for vs, that God may open vnto vs the doore of vtterance, to speake ye mysterie of Christ: wherefore I am also in bonds, That I may vtter it, as it becommeth mee to speake. Walke wisely towarde them that are without, and redeeme the season. Let your speach be gracious alwayes, and powdred with salt, that ye may know how to answere euery man.”
Colssians 4:1-6 GNV
I went to a performance of an original play at the Wesleyan church by my home this weekend and it helped to codify and organize some seemingly random events I have been noticing and experiencing in the world of Christian churches. My observation is one that I can apply to contemporary Christians and American society alike. There is a whole lot of cursory knowledge without any depth of understanding.
Allow me to explain where a lot of this cursory knowledge without depth finds its life. After the past two decades of teaching secondary English from eighth grade through freshman level college, the availability of abundant information gives a lot of cursory knowledge without any depth. Our culture, our society, fosters a people that know a lot about everything but very little about one thing. And it should be no surprise that Christian churches face that same affliction.
I was definitely a victim of this way of thinking as well. Until recently, I never really studied the Bible. I studied sermons. This time around I am a lot older and a lot more seasoned in my ideologies of personal responsibility and accountability. So, I am applying those to learning about YHWH and Christ. That meant I opened an electronic Bible and read the words in there from cover to cover for the first time in all my nearly five decades. I had read parts here and there before. BUT I had never read cover to cover, all the books, in as many versions as I could get my eyes across. And when I decided to get back into going to church, I was looking for Bible study and not sermons. I was looking for deep understanding and study. I was done knowing just enough to be dangerous to myself and others.
The first danger of this cursory knowledge that I had to embrace and often find myself called to task on is that Christ was a Jew, not just a descendant of the tribes of Israel BUT also an actual going to synagogue, reading Torah, observing Sabbath, and celebrating holy days Jew. And there are a lot of issues that Christians have with Judaism. And if you don’t think they do, just mention that Jesus wasn’t His real name. His momma didn’t call him Jesus.
Tied to this first danger is a focus on about five percent of the Bible and an ignorance of the rest. Christians really love letters BUT talk about law and then they brush that off as part of the old covenant. I think Jesus, Yeshua, Yahshua, Christ, whatever you want to call the Son of God, had some very specific things to say about the law in the first book of the new testament in His only full sermon in the Bible. Lots of parables and anecdotes there BUT only one sermon. Dude followed the Torah. Dude said that the law boiled down to two things, love God and your neighbor. How can you love God if you break His laws? How can you love your neighbor if you can’t even love God enough to do what He wants?
That cursory knowledge also brings an ease of conformity to the way of the world around us. Without a deep understanding of the Jewish origins of Christianity, there is only a cursory understanding of the idea of being set apart from the world. Folks in the church like to give lip service to how different they are, however, if that only difference is where you park your tush for an hour or two on Saturday or Sunday and are not really set apart, not separate, not changed daily, then I really don’t get the point. And I have seen this easy adoption of a mutable persona not only in Christianity BUT also in political beliefs which tend to get muddied and mixed and incestuous.
I never saw the point of playing around with the way my life was run. And I have seen this before I decided to follow the Way of the Lord. I didn’t have a “come to Jesus moment”. I was in the process of making changes to my life that I am certain were the direct result of God’s plan for me. So, when I started making changes to my life, I wasn’t playing around. I had a clear path ahead that God then changed and directed along the way.
I stopped pretending to be someone a long time ago. And the hypocrisy I saw in all the different groups I found with thoughts that aligned with me soured me on those groups. One of the main reasons I left the church in my youth was all the hypocrisy I saw there. Now, the one thing that gave me hope about the church was that there were solid folks in my life that I grew up watching that were not hypocrites. They lived a changed life. And it took me many years to get it pounded into my stubborn head that I could choose to not be a hypocrite even when surrounded by hypocrites.
You see, I let the relationship other people had with God dictate the terms of my relationship. That would be like allowing what other people thought about my wife, my kids, my parents, my friends, influence the way I felt about them. And, when I thought about that truth of where I was wrong in that relationship, I started to see that I was allowing their faults become my faults. And that is not consistent with my belief in personal responsibility and self ownership. If I were to not be around hypocrites, then I would never be around people. We all do hypocritical things in life. My decision to follow Christ is hypocritical to the person that was adamantly against church because of hypocritical church people. I get to choose if I am doing what the Lord says or not. That is no one else’s decision BUT me.
And so an essay about what bothered me about Christians became an essay about what bothers me about me. And I think that’s the best way to show where I am going from here on out. I am not going to waste my time trying to fix dogma or hearts by pointing out the hypocrisy. If it comes into my path, I am going to call out the lie and rebuke it. BUT I am focusing on living right. That involves getting more than a cursory knowledge of what the Way of the Lord entails. That involves a lot of Bible study which I try to share with everyone as much as I can. That involves a lot of prayer alone and with others. That involves getting among brothers and sisters and knowing that they struggle too. That involves a lot of change in my heart.
And focusing on me and my heart is a fulltime job. There are a lot of broken people out there that are not going to get fixed by squabbles and fighting about the problems with Christians. And we have a lot of problems. I have a lot of problems. So, I am going to love the folks in the church, the folks outside the church, the hypocrites, the broken, the self righteous, the lost, the indoctrinated, the proud, the humble, the meek, the righteous, the big, the small, the healthy, and the unhealthy. I get to choose to love them all or not. BUT if I choose not to love them, then I am breaking the Law. And both God and I know when my heart sincerely loves them or I am being a hypocrite. And I am working so hard on not being a hypocrite.
Shavua tov. Shalom to your home. Bless your being. The reign of YHWH is now. Be a blessing to YHWH and others.