The bad thing about Christianity is that it will meet you where you are. If you are a mean spirited, thin skinned bigot, you can be a Christian, you can become part of Christ’s church and remain a mean spirited, thin skinned bigot. You can even pick the Bible apart and justify being a mean spirited, thin skinned bigoted Christian, but hopefully, as you become a better and better Christian, you also become a better and better person.
The goal, the focus of my spiritual life is to lead a completely spiritual life. I try to avoid ritual and Legalism and I pay no attention to the mythology, if you will, of our religion. Can I achieve a completely spiritual life? Probably not until I die.
There’s a guy in one of the churches I attend who likes to stand up every time we pray. He’s the only one. There he is standing up, while the rest of us are sitting down. I know this because I don’t bow my head.
Paul tells us in Romans that we are to accept our differences. He talks about vegetarians and about Holy Days specifically. What he says is that if someone does something, whether it’s abstaining from a food or dressing a certain way or standing up when they pray, and they do it in order to honor God, then we are to accept it because they are honoring God.
Could you smoke marijuana and say you are doing it to honor God? I suppose you could. If you could honestly support it and sincerely believe it, not just use God as an excuse to do what you want to do. We get back to the whole new hat in church thing. If you’re standing up during prayer just so everyone can see how devout you are, and I‘m not saying that this guy is, then no, you’re not honoring God.
I’ve told you about saying Thank you Lord when I get the bridle on a horse. A little ritual. When I say a formal prayer, I end it with In Jesus’ Name I Pray. I don’t believe it’s necessary, but I do it. I’ve heard people say that God doesn’t hear a prayer without those words, but I don’t believe that, because when you are continually in prayer, talking to God all day long, there‘s no beginning, no ending, no time to throw that phrase in there, and yet God hears those prayers. I spend next to no time in the Old Testament and I never look at Revelations. Do not debate whether there will be marriage in Heaven, how big our mansions will be or if suicides will be there. Those things hold no interest for me.
That is not to say that people who do those things are wrong. There are very good Christian people who do these things and cause no harm. But. I think we need to be sure that those things don’t become the focus, that the ritual or the details or the arguments or the history don’t become more important than our relationship with God.
I, personally, am trying to take advantage of being a Christian in the Age of Grace. I am very happy to be a Christian of the New Covenant.
The New Covenant was a promise written out in the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah and fulfilled by the birth, the life and the death of Jesus Christ.
The New Covenant is a wonderful thing. Whole books could be written about it and probably have been. I particularly like verse 10 which says that the law will be put in our minds and written on our hearts.
The New Covenant removes us from Judaic Law. From the Law of Moses. You can forget about most of Leviticus. We no longer have to slaughter a dove and enter the temple through a maze to speak to God. It’s not okay to burn a witch or to own a slave, even if he’s a foreigner and you’re nice to him.
And I know this is where I am going to lose some of you, there is no prohibition against homosexuality. How can I say that when I know there are whole ministries devoted to turning people around. Because first of all, I know a lot of Christian gay people who say that God accepts them just the way they are. Whether or not God condemns them is between them and God. And Secondly, because the prohibition against homosexuality is Jewish Law, is Mosaic Law and we do not live by Mosaic Law.
Now, I understand why someone would not believe that. Jesus said that He was not putting aside or changing the Law. And you can ask how I can ignore that. I don’t ignore it, but I also have to ask the question when did He say it, who was He talking to, and how did His death, the rending of the veil change that statement. I think it changed it quite a lot.
Paul talks about leaving Judaism behind when he talks about circumcision in Galatians. He takes it to an extreme, but what he‘s basically saying that if you‘re going to be Jewish, be Jewish. But if you‘re going to be Christian, you need to walk away from Jewish tradition.
Which kind of throws out the entire Messianic Jewish church.
And yet, we know that there are good Christians doing God‘s work in the Messianic Jewish church.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I had no concern for them, says the Lord.
This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach one another or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, of the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.
Hebrews 8:8-12
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