This morning, a question popped into my head.
‘Are you for God?’
I immediately replied, ‘Yes, of course. That’s a dumb question’
But then I’ve been thinking about it all day. Am I really for God or do I just do the surface level ‘good’ things in hopes to earn points from the ‘big guy up there’ so that he’ll be ‘nice’?
I’ll give an example. A few weeks ago, I prayed to God for the restoration of a friendship that was on rocky grounds. That night, the friend reached out to me and surprisingly, I wasn’t excited. It turns out I really didn’t want that friendship to be mended. I just wanted to be the ‘good’ person in God’s eyes. But we can’t mock God.
Oh, another example is my constant search of how close I get to doing the wrong things without actually doing them. How long can stay angry for? I waited until I was about to sleep before I replied that friend – because the bible says ‘don’t let the sun go down on your anger’. I was more worried about going to hell if I didn’t wake up the next day than keeping the peace.
How revealing is too much for my clothes? How vulgar is too vulgar? This one is a huge one – how far away is too far to love someone from? I can literally quote bible verses and tell you all Jesus did to validate my reason for cutting off relationships. Proverbs 4:23 is my absolute fave verse; ‘Above all else, guard your heart’. And my favourite sentence to pull out? – ‘Jesus wasn’t friends with the Pharisees. He loved them from afar‘.
While these verses/interpretations are valid, I made them the bedrock of my lifestyle. I ascribed this attitude toward wisdom but have recently realized that they were excuses. What happened to the numerous verses about loving like Jesus loved us? If Jesus was loving me from as far away as I was loving people I would be wretched. And what about the verse about forgiving others seventy times seven times a day?
(more…)