Religion is Easy
You go to church on Sunday morning. You sing worship songs for 20 minutes. Sit down, then throw a check in the offering basket. Listen to a message in which you hear the “5 Steps to…Being a Better Person, Praying More, Serving Your Community, Getting Into Heaven”. You get the idea. We love lists don’t we? We love the quick fix, checklist mentality they offer us. Put an ‘x’ next to that task, and all of a sudden you’re a Christian. Or a better Christian. Or a Christian who is a step above the one sitting next to you.
That’s all a lie. Here’s the truth:
“The most important one [command],” answered Jesus, “is this…‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
-Jesus, Mark 12:29-31
I am sure most of you have heard this at some point in your life. The gist is quite easy to figure out actually: love God first, love people second. That is it. Jesus’ two-step guide to life as we know it. Easy, right?
Simple to read and understand, yes. However, they are incredibly difficult to live and impossible to perfect. It may be a two-step guide, but they can go in a million different directions. Jesus does give us some extra instruction such as how to pray, do not commit adultery (even in your heart), etc. But this is the core of His teaching. There is no checklist here my friends. These commands are deeper and more loaded than you or I could possibly imagine.
If you are someone whose spiritual life revolves around a checklist of going to church, reading your Bible, praying, evangelizing and serving food to the homeless, you are living inside of a religion.
If you are someone who loves Jesus with all your heart and go to church out of love, read your Bible out of love, pray out of love, evangelize out of love, and serve the homeless out of love, then you are living outside of a religion and inside the heart of Christ. You are living as a disciple.
Being a religious Christian is pretty black and white. Do this and do that and your life work is accomplished. Being a disciple carries a lot of gray area. There are just some things that are not as easy as ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It may not look like it, but it takes more work and sacrifice to live outside the rules of Christianity than it does to live in the ones that we have created over the last couple thousand years.
Religion is easy.
Try being a disciple. A true follower.
Let's journey together.
