Many Christians value a childlike faith in their walk with the Lord. I thought like this for most of my life: If I didn’t understand, I accepted the way things were done because of those who have gone before me and because much of God remains a mystery. To me, pure faith was the ability to accept life’s challenges and injustices because we live in a fallen, sinful world. Trusting that Jesus would return and make things right and good again was key, and avoiding sin and wrong things until that happened was what would keep me on the right path. But as those challenges kept coming, I brought the challenge back to God, asking Him to explain, to make things right, to show me how I was supposed to respond.
I remember expressing honest disappointment when we were house hunting and our offers kept being refused. I remember it because I knew it was okay to doubt Him. I no longer believed it was unacceptable to be angry with God and question Him. Not only could God handle my doubt and anger, He knew that deep in me, that’s what was going on, even before I allowed myself to express it. I knew, like Job in the Old Testament, that God knew exactly what I couldn’t see in the situation. Where was I when He laid the earth’s foundations? Had I ever given orders to the morning? Even as I railed at Him, I told Him I knew He was good and hadn’t forsaken us. I told him that I knew I was being ridiculous and small. I didn’t stay in doubt and anger. It served a purpose. Through expressing the frustration to the Lord, He reassured me and our relationship was strengthened. I drew near to Him in that doubt and anger, and He was faithful to draw near to me.
This was new for me, because I had spent my entire life up until that point believing that avoiding wrong was what made me right before God. Not good deeds, of course, everyone knows it’s by faith and not by works, but if my heart wasn’t right, then that must compromise my faith, right?
The mindset of thinking of things in terms of right and wrong made my decisions to engage the secular world increasingly less frequent. If the danger to become OF the world was the result when one engaged IN the world, avoidance was self-preservation. If minimizing sin was paramount to righteous living, avoiding negative influences and temptation was of higher importance than engaging the culture and forming relationships with people outside my Christian bubble. And my Christian bubble was going strong. So strong, that almost all of my meaningful interactions were exclusively with people in my own church community.
I joined a Bible Study Fellowship group. As an interdenominational or “parachurch fellowship”, there were women from many different Christian churches and various denominations from the area. I self-righteously and ignorantly believed that my non-denominational church doctrine was above the liturgis and restrictive doctrine of any denomination, so I had a bit of a guard up for fear of being influenced by what these other ladies undoubtedly wanted to influence me with. However, a rule of BSF is to refrain from discussing denominational topics or even books other than the Bible. Through this, my naivety was somewhat chipped away at, and I experienced care from people who didn’t really know me, people who respected me when I spoke, people who remembered to pray for me.
It was a healthy few years and something that was worth packing up the little ones to get there on cold Tuesday mornings. But it was only a step in the process God was leading me on to be open to living outside of a framework that kept me from the risk of wrongness. Freedom comes with the understanding that scripture and the Holy Spirit work in tandem to guide us as we go. It’s why we still need the Holy Spirit. If a set of rules were all we needed to avoid sin and live in righteousness, then there would be no need for the Holy Spirit’s influence and voice in our life. There would be no need for Jesus either.
In Matthew 22, when Jesus was asked by an expert in religious law, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” He didn’t answer, “figure out what is right and wrong; do right, avoid wrong.” But this is how we live, isn’t it? We include loving our neighbor in the category of “what is right”, instead of understanding that “what is right” will inherently follow when the decision to love our neighbor is made.
With no mention of avoiding sin, Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
As a pastor I work with in youth ministry has been known to say, loving our neighbor is one of the best and purest ways we can love God. Christians continue to argue that loving equates to affirmation of sinful living, and until we reject that mentality, the Law and the Prophets will be an elusive concept that we will be unable to fulfill.
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