There has always been something in me that automatically pushes away ideas that I don’t agree with. Sometimes, or rather more often than not I am scared on some level of what you’re pushing on me so my reaction is even more defensive. In my past life, or pre-God days, I would be willing to fight over these things.
Things like the idea of sobriety. Or how to be a good parent. Or how to treat people with kindness.
I would push away ideas about how to be a good, decent member of a family.
You want to tell me that I would be better off forgiving someone? We can fight.
But….the biggest point of contention was always over God. DO NOT under any circumstances try to push your concept of God on me unless you want to be met with complete resistance. I did some research. I actually did a lot of research and it always felt like the teachings of Jesus were more of a shaming thing. A “If you are a non-believer you are a lesser human” type of thing. Never did I feel welcomed because never was I a believer in Christ.
I still feel like a lot of “Christianity” isn’t for me. What I mean by that is, there’s a lot of people who call themselves Christians that conduct themselves in ways I don’t think Jesus would embrace. This is true for any group of people, I get that. I’m not just pointing a finger at one sect of religion. I consider myself a believer in Christ. I feel that the relationship I have with Him is what’s most important, not the label people attach to me because of my beliefs. You want to call me a Christian? That’s ok. You want to call me a heretic? That’s ok as well. Ultimately, I want to grow closer to God, to tighten my relationship with Him and to treat my brothers and sisters with love.
Check out this quote:
“If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody. And this is because the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders its desire to convert people and convince them to join. It is when the church gives itself away in radical acts of service and compassion, expecting nothing in return, then the way of Jesus is most vividly put on display. To do this, the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in categories of in or out, saved or not, believer or nonbeliever. Besides the fact that these terms are offensive to those who are the “un” and “non”, they work against Jesus’ teachings about how we are to treat each other. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God, and we are all sacred, valuable creations of God. Everybody matters. To treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone. As the book of James says, “God shows no favoritism.” So we don’t either.”
― Rob Bell
I have recently been on the hunt for understanding. Not strictly for Bible knowledge, but exclusively to understand Jesus teaching better. Bible knowledge will be (and started to be) a bi-product of that.
I can’t describe why this is happening, but it’s happening. I have very little free time, but I seem to have been able to carve out 15-20 minutes a day to study. That’s extra weird for me. I am trying to study. I have several different books I am involved in right now. One obviously being the Bible. The other two are Bible related.
Any other time, if I’m studying something, it’s because the knowledge I gain from the study is going to be used as a weapon. In this case, I have no other motive than to be closer to God. I do hope that He changes me to be a better person than I am currently. I hope by doing this I will be a better husband. I want to be a better father and a better son. I hope that by studying scripture with the intent of understanding it better, I can help more people.
If you would’ve tried to push this idea on me, shamed me by pointing out that I am uninformed, positioned yourself as better than me because of your knowledge or understanding… you’d be down one less believer in Christ. I hope that you think about that. I hope that you can apply this idea to your life, with all your beliefs.