"Artifical Spirituality"

Yo! It’s been awhile since I blogged. Haha:D
Well anyway, back to living for Christ. I mentioned my dear teammates in this post too:)

I received a book from my pastor for youth Sunday. It’s titled, “The Life You’ve Always Wanted”. It mentioned the transformation of Christians. We know that we are called to come out and be separate from the world as our faith and commitment to Christ makes us different from others. However, we are always looking for external methods to achieve this by setting boundary markers.

In the first century, there were laws focusing on dietary laws, circumcision, and the Sabbath. These practices gave them an identity that separated them from the outsiders. However, the heart of the law was “The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” These superficial practices enabled the insiders to distinguish the insiders and outsiders of the family of God. And the insiders became proud and judgmental towards the outsiders.

The message by Jesus was not to simply conform to the religious subculture, but to be transformed into a “new creation”. Jesus focused more on the center, the heart of spiritual life, instead of the superficial boundaries.

In Matthew chapter 12, Jesus’s disciples were hungry and picked some heads of grain and ate them. Upon seeing this, the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” In Matthew 12:6-7, Jesus replied “I tell you that one greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’, you would not have condemned the innocent.”

In Matthew 15:2, the Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus and asked, “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” Jesus replied in Matthew 15:3, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?”

Throughout the gospel, Jesus has turned prostitutes and tax collectors towards the kingdom of God, but the Pharisees and teachers of the law were stubborn and doubted Jesus. Matthew 21:31-32, Jesus told the Pharisees and teachers of the law, “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Hence, as the author of “The Life You’ve Always Wanted” wrote, this is the great irony of his day: the “righteous” were more damaged by their righteousness than the sinners were by their sins. And just as the author wrote, “it is possible to think that we are becoming more spiritual when in fact, we are only becoming more smug and judgmental”. This is what a quote was referring to as, “a good man in the worst sense of the word”.

In this book, someone once asked the author whether he thought that the church where he worked might be wordly. The person asked “Well, you use drama, and people are used to that in the world. And you play contemporary music just like they're used to hearing. So how will they know you’re any different? And everybody knows that as Christians, we’re supposed to be different from people in the world…”

Seems like Christians get confused with what Jesus said about “being part of the world but not of the world”, me included (hehe…). We are told not to conform to the world, but we always think that we should not follow the trend of the world. For example, the disapproval of rock music for singing praises during worship. We are only told in Romans 12:2 to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. Of course, there are practices that should be carried out like in Ephesians 5:18 “do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery”. Although that doesn’t mean we can’t totally drink. It’s just that we must not get drunk.

However, this superficiality does not only apply to Christians. I’ve ever come across non-Christians who are so “righteous” that they actually look down upon others. You’d have to admit, all of us are judgmental, quick to stereotype. We may think that those who can’t speak fluent English but speak fluent Singlish are “gangster-ish”, when in fact, they’re probably the nicest people. I learned that from my dear teammates whom I love ever so much. The smug, artificial friends I had were those who think they’re so “cultured”.

Well, we are all guilty of being artificial, doing and saying things that we think a spiritual person is supposed to say. Pride is a potential problem for those who take spiritual growth seriously. Pray that God will pull us back from that. And I thank God that I am able to share this with you all.