The Irony of Christ's Church - Part 2

Having been emboldened by positive responses to last week's post, I'm going to venture a little further down the same road: I've never met a Christian who believes every word of the New Testament is relevant to our lives today. Many of us think we do, but when it comes right down to it, we don't.

Mostly because of the churches or denominations in which we were raised, or at some point became a part of, we have certain prejudices about what we accept and what we don't. For example, some denominations believe miracles still happen, and others think those times are past. Some embrace speaking in tongues and others do not. Some adopt certain clothing preferences. There are those who won't drink alcohol and some who think men shouldn't have long hair (and yet, interestingly, they often have "portraits" on display in their homes of Jesus with flowing locks). All sides of those issues can be justified using the New Testament, by the way.

I won't undertake to comment on what practices in those areas might be right or wrong, because it is not my job to do so. I will say almost all of those positions, and many more, have been reached not based on what Jesus taught, but on cultural and religious traditions and on letters written by followers of Jesus to address specific problems going on within other groups of followers.

If we actually believed and practiced what Jesus taught, first of all, we would not worry or fret, and we would also realize many of the things which have become important to organized religion, don't matter all that much to Jesus. His teachings focus on love, peace, relationships and trying to get us to break free from the bondage of tradition. I encourage you to read it for yourself in Matthew 5-7.

What is important to each of us? What are we passionate about? Good questions to ask ourselves, but for those who follow Jesus, a better question is, in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, especially, what is Jesus passionate about? If what is important to us doesn't match up with what is important to him, we know where the adjustments in thinking need to be made.