I don't think that living Christian life is all that complicated, which is very different question than: "Is it hard?" Jesus himself simplifies it to two rules: love God and love others. The loving of God part is supposed encompass our entire being. Jesus, when asked what the greatest commandment was, cited Deuteronomy 6:5. "Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." Pretty simple. Paul say pretty much the same kind of thing in Colossians 3:17: " And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Not too complicated. as I am writing this, I am substitute teaching at Bradley Bourbonnais community High School. How do I love God as I sit there, supervising students in a pre-calculus class? Mixing "church work" and "school work" seems like a good start. As they get done with their assignments and have some free time toward the end of class, I will be switching into more of a relationship building mode, Hopefully, God will be honored as I check on Jake's walk with Christ and laugh at Mary‘s bubbly nature. Driving home and respecting (a step below "obeying") the speed limit will be a good thing as well.

Unfortunately, Jesus kept quoting. Not only are we to love the Lord with all of our being, he said that we are to "love our neighbors as ourselves." Now the Christian life gets tough, becoming more than “respecting” rules. Suddenly, I must esteem the moron who cuts me off on an icy road so that he can get to the next red light, which lasts way too long, three seconds before I do. If Jesus counted the Samaritan and the fallen Israelite as being neighbors, then I think that perhaps it is as bad as this: everyone is my neighbor, and I am supposed to love them. Biblically, love cannot be discounted as mere positive feelings toward a given person, but rather as selfless actions specifically aimed at benefiting said person, without my benefit being in view at all. What did the Samaritan gain by loving the fallen Jew? Only loss. His own people would have been angry with him for aiding their enemy, and certainly the Jewish community would have been upset that a Jew and Samaritan had any manner of contact at all. There was absolutely no benefit to his loving his neighbor, yet he loved him anyway.

Jesus loves us like this. What real benefit does he gain by having laid down his life for us? He could have just scrapped the whole lot of us and started over. No, God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

So, living the Christian life is indeed pretty simple. Love God, love everybody else.

Climbing a mountain is pretty simple, too. You carry minimal equipment because too much stuff just weighs you down and makes the climb harder. Sometime you get pretty tired, especially when faced with a tough ascent. You get hurt sometimes; A cut, a strain, sprain, bruise or break. These slow you down as you heal or have to move slowly for a while, but you keep climbing, because it’s simple. You learn to see rock differently as you climb. A deformity in the wall face is now a hand hold, and that vertical crack is a place to jam you forearm into it and make a fist. This can make quite a firm “grip”. It really hurts sometimes, but you keep going on, because you have this simple goal: The top.

I have found that it is far better to climb with others. There’s support, encouragement, healing and counsel. Let’s keep climbing, striving to reach the top! (Hebrews 12)

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who is gay, along with another friend who is a very solid believer. For this purpose, the gay friend shall be called Joe and the Christian friend shall be tagged as Sally. Joe talks to Sally about his gayness and various relational aspects regarding his behavior. Sally gets pretty frustrated about it due to Joe’s complete rejection of her ethics. It is not that Joe says that she is wrong to deem his behaviors as being bad or sinful. He does something far worse: He states that she has a right to her opinion and he to his. More than merely being gay, he is an existentialist, believing that there is no Base of morality or value; that everyone simply behaves according to the dictates of his or her own mind. If there is a god, Joe holds that each will be judged according to how they dealt with their beliefs. He even said that it is a matter of opinion whether or not Hitler was wrong in his treatment of Jews, Gypsies, Christians and the like. Der Fuhrer will be judged according to how he lived out his beliefs.

Welcome to the post modern mindset!

What I find really fascinating about Joe’s worldview is that he feels the need to have some manner of higher authority, who really cares nothing about what one has believed, so long as they lived out those beliefs with some manner of sincerity. So in the end, both President Bush and Harry Reed are right because they both have lived out their beliefs.

In quizzing Joe further (Sally dropped out by this point), he would not even hold that two quarters always equal 50 cents because there is the possibility that some other culture might put different values on quarters and half dollars. Indeed, Joe’s logic here is silly, but it does indicate a complete unwillingness to accept any base for anything. He refuses to allow any base for truth, yet he is disturbed bugged at those who do if they have any distain for his lifestyle at all.

From a Biblical perspective, he believes that everyone should do what is right in their own eyes. I suppose then, according to Joe, God (god) doesn’t really care at all what people do or think so long as they are sincere. Are we then to allow others to do as they will so long as they act according to their beliefs? If so, then we are in gross error to hold that Mr. Bin Laden has done anything “wrong” to us. But then again, Mr. Bin Laden is also in error to hold that there is anything wrong with America. The only conclusion for Joe is that nothing can ever really be known. Any semblance of knowing is just the illusion of one’s own mind set. There can be no “right” any more than there “wrong. We are each our own Law Giver, creating temporary moral constructs that don‘t matter to anyone but ourselves, which means that they don’t really Matter. Are we then any better than the beasts, who merely seek to survive, looking out for only their own interests? (Yes, there are some animals who will protect their young a personal peril, but the Darwinists among us would point out that this is an instinctive reaction in which the parent(s) unwittingly seek to assure the survival of their genetic structure, which would be a self-motive.) The Andrea Dorea sank because of this branch of reason. Two captains, each sincerely believing they were doing the exact right thing, created a disaster.

We who seek to honor Jesus, then, are in the religious and philosophical minority, with the “arrogance” to believe that we alone are right in our understanding of life, and that those who disagree with this understanding are wrong. If we hold that there is but one Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth to whom every creature is accountable, we are the oddity. If we hold that Jesus Christ is all the fullness of the deity in bodily form (Colossinas 2:9), who came and paid the price for all of our sins (violation of a static moral code), we are unique.

In the plagues, the Egyptians learned that their entire theistic system was a farce. Their “gods” were humiliated in the face of Reality, and many of them became followers of the only real God. In Christ, if he is indeed True, we see who God really is in an up close and personal way. As he lives in us, folks hopefully get to see him fleshed out. Hopefully, folks see that a world view, an ethic rooted in a singular divine Being, actually works far better then the current meaningless mesmerizing moral morass that the world embraces as if it were jello.

If we love each other in the way that Jesus has taught us to love, everyone will know that we are is disciples as we show that indeed Jesus is the exclusive Way, Truth and Life. (John 13:34-35) This knowledge will not be gained because we have gushy feeling for each other, but because we treat each other as Jesus treats us. How is this love fleshed out? Earlier in John 13, Jesus demonstrates his love for us in that he washed his disciples feet. I find it fascinating that John states that this is how Jesus showed the full extent of his love for them. (13:1) If those like Joe see us humbling ourselves in selfless acts of service toward each other, and even toward them, “perhaps” we can teach them by living Christ. We can show them that this works. I think though, that all too often, we get caught up in the self-centering mindset that places “my way” as the ultimate value. Regardless of what Christ says about how to live, we are prone to act as if life really doesn’t work that way. We become consumed with our agendas and status rather than abandoning them for the sake of Christ through self-denying humble service to others.

For Joe, life is all about him, his desires, pleasures and fulfillment. Philosophically, he ends up Nowhere with Nothing. For us, life is about Christ (Galatians 2:20) and we end up with Him and Everything! Let us show him Jesus!

~barabas