Bigger Than MeSample

Some who are reading this may have a deep faith in Jesus. But I’m certain others have no particular connection to Jesus. They may see Him from the perspective of some other religion. Or they simply may be agnostic or atheistic. Of course, your spiritual choices are completely up to you, and I personally resent the force-feeding of beliefs. I would like to share some perhaps “outside the box” thinking about the person of Jesus, and I only ask for an open mind and heart. What have you got to lose?

We can be so far removed from Jesus that, in addition to being toxic Christians, we often turn Jesus into a storybook character. Rodney Howard-Browne, in his book Seeing Jesus as He Really Is makes this point well. Jesus wasn’t the soft-voiced, fragile young man with the lamb under his arm and the preference for speaking Elizabethan English. If He were among us now, He’d still be clashing with the religious powers that be. And a great number of us wouldn’t like Him at all, particularly those of us who claim to like Him the most right now. 

“Religious tradition tries to keep him on the cross or in the crib,” Howard-Browne writes. “In the cross or in the crib, but not in the crowd—not out where he can change the way the world lives and loves.” Our current religious leaders might likely be at the head of the mob running Him out of town. We handle Jesus by toning Him down, by making Him fit for polite company. But He was never mild or dull. I prefer to define my own spiritual journey that way and consider myself simply a follower of Jesus. 

In this season of life, as I think about what is really important to me, I need to lose my religion and learn what it truly means to follow Jesus. There’s a simplicity to that, and I find it empowering. I don’t have volumes of creeds and laws to learn. I just follow the leader. Jesus told His disciples to do neither more nor less than practicing what He taught. And in its essence, what He taught is really fairly simple. Love God and love others.