Perhaps he's partially right but obviously doesn't understand faith.
"The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it."
Yes, Christianity is following, living like and seeing the world as Jesus sees it. But isn't faith the fuel that gives us the potential to be like Jesus?
Or is it "faith" that we have in our eye's view, while "love" wrongly sits in our peripheral? Just as "religion" is confused with the "spirituality" we have.
ReplyDeleteFaith is our trust and belief in God, knowing what He says is inerrant. While religion is a belief SYSTEM, that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality.
As we begin our relationship with Jesus, we struggle with our faith because we are learning to love Him. While eventually as a believer, having been touched by His grace and pulled from the fires of life by Our's Truly, we will have a developed learning to love the One who showed us no greater love than by laying His life down for us!
Point being! As infants grow to know that their earthly fathers will love and care for them, learning to trust them & run to them when they feel afraid or insecure…it is their faith that's in the peripheral because they know the love in their relationship with their father, knowing that they will be cared for and properly directed without question. It is this love that we must have and feel that makes it easy to sustain our faith, to live like Jesus and see the world as He saw it!
Our relations to inanimate and animate creations alike are all we have. Our relation to our Creator is the most important, but it is love that binds us. Love being what changes the relation to a relationship! Faith is apart of the system of religion that tries to relate us to spirituality but it is love that maintains our spirituality. Jesus was/is love and He is asking us to continue His legacy, loving one another as He so loved us. That is what I believe is the greatest way to live like Jesus, seeing the world as He saw it.
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." -- John 13:34
Maybe in view of how believers maintain instead of seeking to change the world around them, Jobs noticed the lack of juice in our religion because the lack of spirituality involved. All of this due to "going along with the motions!" Continuously repeating the same ritual week after week and getting no greater result. That could be defined as insanity by a great mind of the past, but that's a different conversation!!
I think faith IS living like Jesus. Faith is saying "Not my will, but Yours be done."
ReplyDeleteFaith demands that we live like Jesus.
ReplyDeleteIf you truly have faith, it will guide your actions. If I believe Jesus is both my God and my Savior, then I will live much differently then someone who believes he is just a nice guy. So yeah, I think faith does fuel our ability to follow Him and love others.
Great stuff! My struggle with his statement is faith and living like Jesus are not in conflict.
ReplyDeleteThe more we believe in the gospel of grace the more we are empowered to love like Jesus loved.
I agree James, when we observe Christianity from the out side sometimes it seems as if we are blindly believing a set of religious facts. It can seem that our faith doesn't translate into living like Jesus did and caring for those in need like Jesus did.
But change from the inside out results when we believe the gospel. As we believe the gospel we are reborn and given the Holy Spirit which gives the potential to experience and give love, joy, peace, patience...