CHECKING BOXES

The gospel of Jesus is all about our relationship with Jesus rather than about formulas, systems of truth tenants, ideas or theology.  These things are nice in that they compute easily into memory and make us feel spiritual, and possibly prideful, as we share our knowledge, but they may also blind us to the absolute necessity of intimate relationship that must be developed between our heart and God’s heart, for us truly to become His followers.  Formula Christianity may give people a false sense of security - sort of “checking the boxes”, “completing the requirements” - while stealing the sincerity and humility with which we should engage God in search of relationship.  A person must understand that Jesus is alive, that He exists, that He is God, that He is in authority, that we need to submit to Him, that He has the power to save, that He loves us very much, that He died to reestablish relationship with us, and so on.  All of these are ideas embedded in a relational dynamic, a mysterious interaction between the heart of a person and the heart of God.  Becoming a Christian is more like falling in love than baking a cake.

The analogy has been made between converting to Christianity and sitting in a chair: a person may have faith that the chair will hold him, but until he has sat in the chair he has not acted on his faith.  One can see the modernist perspective here, that truth must be tested to be true, and once tested it is possessed as truth.  In this way, the spiritual disciplines, the steps and actions religious folks conjure up or absorb from organizational structures, evolve into a sort of spiritual checklist, a barometer of their spiritual maturity.  But in our quest for proof that we are “OK” we may miss the deep relational exchange of these spiritual disciplines.  We fast because we mourn the absence of Christ and to reposition our heart closer to God’s heart.  We pray to share our heart with Him - like a tried and true friend - sharing happiness and sadness, weakness and strength and asking for help to walk in His footsteps. We study His words to understand what pleases Him, what brings a twinkle to His eyes, and we worship Him to add to and declare His value, for He alone is worthy of our worship. We take communion as a way to remember Him - His life, His death, His pain and suffering, His humility, His love for us and His glorious resurrection trail blazing the way for our new life in Him.  How sad if we treat these deeply relational acts as check marks on our “I’m OK” list, when Christ has come to explode into our hearts as the lover of our soul, our beloved bridegroom, to mend our broken relationship by marriage in a spiritual union more beautiful, more passionate and more intimate than anything this world will ever know.

IT’S A RELATIONSHIP

NOT A RECIPE