Have you ever asked yourself this question “perhaps I am doing it wrong?”
There are many things I do where I wonder if there is a better way of doing them but perhaps habits, expectation and copying what everyone else is doing keeps me doing what I have always done, and not discovering new ways of doing and being.
My friend Chris recently talked about having to “unlearn” lots of things he thought were foundational to his Christian life only to realise that actually they’re not. There are many things in my Christian life that I need to re-learn –or at least re-apply- and habits that I need to break and some I need to implement if I am truly going to have life that follows Jesus.
I realise too that as a young and probably more impressionable Christian I would blur middle class, stiff upper-lipped, Sunday best respectability with what it meant to be a good Christian…
In fact, I am not sure the term “good Christian” is helpful as it does imply a pecking order rather than Christianity simply being “one beggar telling another where to buy bread”.
Too many of us have climbed up the greasy pole of church leadership and drowned under rotas, events, minutes of meets, agenda’s and accounts asking this is not what Jesus meant when he said his burden was easy and his yoke light. I know I have confused church based busyness to Kingdom fruitfulness and found that they were very different things, trying to pour new wine into very cracked and broken wine skins and wondering if I was actually doing anything positive at all?
My friend Chris also said that for him “the Kingdom of God” was just another way of saying Heaven when we die, and “the Christian life was all about moral purity” –As I listened to Chris saying this on his you-tube, I laughed out loud as this probably is how I was growing up! My idea of what Spiritual maturity looked like was not saying naughty swear words and being home by 8:00 on a school night(!), but I have since realised that this is a massive misunderstanding of what the Christian life , and following Jesus, is all about, which is actually good news as this doesn’t sound much like Jesus promise of “life in all its fullness/abundance” is all about!
The Kingdom of God is not just another way of saying “heaven” but something we are called both to “seek first” and to pray that it comes “on earth as in heaven (whereby God’s will is done)” and has less to do hiding away from the bad world for fear of contamination and trying really hard to avoid sin, but rather to impact the world with the DNA of the Kingdom of God (which is good news for all people, and isn’t just trying re-popularise Graham Kendick songs from the ‘90s!) and live as ambassadors of a different and more Christ-like way of being human.
As I thought about our call to seek the Kingdom first it is a manifesto that turns all our conventional assumptions upside down, or rather in an upside-down world the Kingdom turns everything the right way up, we see the world differently, no wonder Paul urges us to have our minds renewed.
As I thought about what it meant to be Christ-like, I was struck by the fact that he got invited to party with sinners –people who would never darken the doors of our churches were drawn to Jesus and kids wanted to come to him (kids rarely gravitate to boring old farts!). Jesus had a better handle on doing life than anyone in history, and I don’t think anyone who could turn water into wine, change the weather and raise the dead could be described as boring!
I wondered if I wanted an exciting spiritual life and faith, or did I really just want to blend in and be like everyone else? Do I really take Jesus’ challenge to be salty and light seriously? Do I “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly” or is that just a nice idea to have written on a bag I bought from a Christian festival?
At the risk of over-quoting Chris he believes that it is evident by our fruit “by their fruit you will know them”, this is how all people will know you are my disciples –bumper-stickers, worship albums, turning up to Church stuff a lot- or by “love one for another- are we exhibiting the fruits of the spirit in our everyday life, and as we go on in our Christian lives are we seeing an increase of these fruits –are we getting more kind, generous, loving or joyful?
Yesterday I was talking with a friend who was telling me how some of her friends went the extra mile for her in a difficult situation, and I thought this is what it means to live our lives Christ’s way. It is those moment by moment choices, cares and commitments but might be unseen but to those being blessed they matter so much.
As I thought about this it encapsulates what I am trying to grasp, a new idea of the Christian life that is one that is attractive –not in a showing off look at me aren’t I holy kind of a way- but more “I want what they have” something of “glimpsing that treasure” (God) within our jars of clay (our everyday lives).
So, I’ve no real idea of how to do it differently, but I don’t want to continue to do my Christian life as I have lived too much of it for perhaps too long, instead, I believe God has a new and better way which he is calling us to explore with the words “this is the way, walk in it”.
scruffyvicar 