Discipling the Undisciplined no. 10

No scripture today. Just a reflection on this Friday before I get into another zesty topic from Jesus and His Sermon on the Mount. And I wanted to talk about me in this blog post because I know a lot about me. And I also wanted to talk about labels.

I do not follow The Bible. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say for a guy that is always reading The Bible and has multiple scripture quotes on his Facebook feed daily. I know saying that I don’t follow The Bible runs directly opposite of what most evangelical churches immediately say when you get their elevator pitch about what they are all about. BUT I do not follow The Bible. I follow God through the example of Jesus and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit by using The Bible as one means of understanding Him. The Bible is a really important tool for understanding Him and I never want to discount how important reading, studying, and meditating on The Bible is BUT it is not an end to itself. And a lot of folks are treating The Bible like it is literally a god and worshiping the scrolls and letters rather than the God behind it all. And that gets really confusing and those lines for me, and probably for you as well, are not really that distinct.

So let me give you an example about how being Bible literate BUT not God understanding can get us into trouble. In America, The Bible was used to support enslavement. Now, most of us understand that slavery in any form is not part of what Jesus was all about BUT folks still would use cherry-picked verses from The Bible to support that view.  Those folks that supported slavery even went to churches and identified as Christian. And everything those folks believed was supported by The Bible. You can jump forward and backward in history and find all types of folks using The Bible to support all kinds of things that do not align with understanding God’s example through Jesus guided by the Holy Spirit. Crusades, Manifest Destiny, genocide, The Holocaust, and so many more that I just don’t really want to remember were all carried about folks weaponizing The Bible, attending church, and identifying as Christians. It is historical fact. No way of getting around that.

So, where am I going with all this? Well, knowing The Bible and using scriptures are no way to discern whether something is in alignment with being Christian. Everyone can easily remember that The Satan uses the scrolls in the wilderness before Jesus gives His Sermon on the Mount. So, is The Satan a Christian? I think we can all agree that The Satan’s kingdom idea and The Kingdom of God should be really different. And by reading, studying, meditation, praying, and wrestling with those ideas of The Bible, we all grow in our understanding of what it is to be a Christian. Just quoting scripture does not make your point valid. Dudes, when I was not a Christian, I could still quote scripture. My years of Sunday school didn’t disappear because I left the church. So, let’s not equate knowing The Bible as some sort of litmus test for being a Christian either. 

Christianity is all about grace. And that is where I want to end my little rant today. Christianity is not about knowing The Bible or becoming a church member or helping out the poor or volunteering time in a ministry. Those are all great things BUT what makes us a Christian is changing our heart. And no one can really know if our heart has changed BUT us and God. Sure there are hints that we can give by how we react to things candidly and in the moment, BUT no one knows for sure. So, I am never going to say someone is not a Christian because they support any number of things. What I am going to do is speak out about actions that do not align with the teachings of Jesus and His example. Being a Christian means that I am following The Christ, God’s anointed, God incarnate, God made flesh, that lived and died and resurrected. I am following the example of Jesus because He said to know Him is to know The Father God. And I listen to the Holy Spirit as it moves and directs my life to better live out His plan for my life. And I get a better understanding of Jesus and God by reading The Bible. God wants a relationship with me. He just doesn’t want me to read a book about Him. I can know an awful lot about folks by reading books about them BUT there is no substitute for meeting them, spending time with them, eating a meal with them, going out on a date with them, and spending my life living with them. And that is what God wants, a marriage, a long-term relationship. And that is what makes me a Christian. Not anything else. And I am pretty bad at it. BUT I keep working on that relationship.

Well, I don’t know if that made any sense or helped anything at all BUT I wanted to just get some ideas down this morning in the brief time I had with the change in routine. Monday I am going to hit Matthew 5:27-30 and continue looking at what Jesus said.

Grace and Shalom to your home. 

#DisciplingTheUndisciplined #ThinkBetter #BeBetter #NoKingButChrist #EmbraceTheWithin #SeekFirstTheKingdom #ServeOneAnotherInLove #NotMyWayYHWH