I am skeptical
searching
wondering
researching
confused right now.
Not just with where my life should go, where I want my life to go, "who" I am, but "what" I am. I have become tired of the Christian community I am familiar with deciding who I am and what my purpose is. I love the people in that community, hate the things that supply and demand from it. In better terms, I hate the marketability of Christianity.
Who are we calling ourselves Christians, anyway? There are no Christians in the Bible. They were all Jews. Jesus was a Jew, for goodness sake. But this is for another blog post.
Anyway.
I am reading the book The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg. (marketable?) Not by my own merit (ever), but because I am in a summer Bible study group reading this book. It is simplistic modern Christianity at best. And at worst? Marketable.
What is Ortberg's intent in writing this book? I like to think it is a genuine, good intent. But how many "Christian self-help" books focused on white-collar Christianity have I read? Too many. Books that tell me exactly what I need to know to live a solid Christian life, assuring me that the Christian life is "difficult" (Do Americans even know what a truly difficult life is?), but God is out for our good so be thankful and surrender to Him.
I would like to think that the 'Christian' life is more than reading self-help books, hesitant tithing, praying to a ceiling, and listening to sermon podcasts on my iPod. I would like to think that God is so much bigger than churchy jargon and idealistic-but-not-utilized concepts we offer to ourselves, and to each other.
I like to think that walking in nature,
having a deep conversation with a friend,
crying with my husband,
eating a well-prepared meal,
journaling my thoughts,
smiling at a passerby,
is dwelling in His presence.
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing these thoughts, Sasha. I've had some of the same myself. I'm reading through the book of John right now and enjoying the sermons Jesus gives about fulness of life. He has really offered so much more than what modern Christianity espouses. It is about taking up one's cross, being humble, loving others. He certainly commands us to be holy, but it's not about being self-righteous and relying on ourselves (pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, to borrow a Western saying).
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