My friends, this is modern day Christianity. The other day while scrolling through
Facebook I ran across a post a friend shared titled, “An 11-Step Religious
Guide to Sabotaging Your Life” by Jim Palmer.
One of the ways to sabotage your life listed was, “Focus on behavior modification, checklists, do’s and
don’ts, appearances, obedience, and keeping the rules when it comes to living
your life.” Then following it was, “Make
everything black and white.” As one who
once adhered to all eleven of those ways listed to sabotage my life up until
fourteen years ago when Jesus began untangling me from all this junk, I
excitedly reposted this list on Facebook.
But it occurred to me later, when many of my Christian friends read the
statements like the ones I quoted they’d be puzzled, shocked, or even
offended. “So you don’t believe in right
and wrong?!” They’d think I’d gone off
the deep end. They’d think I’m
advocating living a life of immorality; that I joined the “Church of do
whatever you want to.” How do I know
this? Because that’s what I would’ve
thought over fourteen years ago.
There is a horrible thing
that has taken place in Christianity. A
belief that was once simply about following Jesus and living in His life and
joy was high jacked and became a cursed religion; a religion of death. How did this happen? Simple.
Christians exchanged the life of Christ for a religion of morality. Christianity, for the most part, is no longer
rooted in Christ, rather it is rooted in knowing right from wrong. This is a far more dastardly thing than most
people realize. Most people think, “Okay,
so we keep the rules but we need to fall more in love with Jesus. Got it.”
But what they fail to realize is it was the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil that brought the entire curse from which Christ came to redeem us
upon humanity! The Christianity of do’s and
don’ts is actually causing people to eat the fruit of the same tree that cursed
all of humanity. It is a religion of
death!
I want to emphasize
something here. I think when most people
hear the words “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” what they actually
hear is “The Tree of the Knowledge of EVIL.”
But that’s not the tree that brought the curse on humanity. It was the Tree of the Knowledge of GOOD and
evil. Yes! Knowing good from evil is part of the
curse!
At this point many are
scratching their heads. “Aren’t we
supposed to know good from evil?” The
answer to that is actually, “No.” We
were created to only know God. We were
supposed to live in relationship with Him and He would be our everything and
meet our every need. That includes that
He would be the One who shows us the path to walk and the way to live. We were created to be like children living in
worriless freedom through our complete dependence on our ever so loving Father
who cares for our every need.
When the serpent tempted
Adam and Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil he
said, “You’ll be like God, knowing good from evil.” In other words, “You won’t need Him
anymore. You will be your own
guide. YOU will be able to tell what is
GOOD and what is Evil for YOURSELF. You
will no longer be dependent upon Him to guide you. You will be able to live independent of
Him. You will no longer need to have any
kind of relationship with Him. You will
be able to do it all yourself.”
So basically what
happened is humanity turned to God and said, “We know right from wrong. We got this.
We can manage ourselves. You can
go away.” We see this same attitude in
the Hebrews when God delivered them from slavery in Egypt. God wanted to speak to them and have a
personal relationship with them but they were afraid. So they turned to Moses and said, “You go
find out what He wants us to do and we’ll do it.” Once again we see the curse at work. The people we’re saying, “We want to be our
own counselors. We want to manage our
own lives. We want to do this ourselves. You go get us the rules so we’ll know right
from wrong and we’ll follow them.” This is
what Moses did and as Jesus pointed out, they couldn’t keep the rules. It was too burdensome for them. Yet they kept trying.
And this is also what
Christianity did. Jesus came and was
nailed to a tree because it was a tree that brought the entire curse upon
humanity. He became the curse and
removed it from the world. God said, “Alright,
the curse has been broken, the penalty it demanded has been paid so now this
whole knowledge of good and evil thing is off the table. You no longer need to know your sin. I’ve removed it. Now we can freely be in relationship. The very thing I’ve always wanted with you!” But as the decades rolled by Christians began
to say, “You know what, we got this God.
You just tell us what to do and we’ll do it.” Like the Hebrews, they picked out people from
among them to go hear from God for them and tell them what to do. They took the
letters beautifully written by the apostles to the early churches, the gospels,
and the writings of the Hebrews and turned them into a book of rules. “No relationship with God needed, we’ve got
the list of do’s and don’ts. We can manage this. But of course we’ll still honor God with our
lips for giving us these rules to live by.”
This is why Paul, when addressing those in the early church that were
attempting to make it a requirement that Christians be circumcised in order to
follow Christ wrote, “Mark my words! I, Paul, tell
you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to
you at all.” In other words, “If
you’re going to try to justify yourselves by following a set of rules then
Jesus came for nothing. You think you
don’t need Him. You’re still under the
curse.”
Having been raised in a
Christianity in which the Bible was a rule book and it was all about morality,
I’m sure many are pondering, “Then how is it we’re supposed to live?” We’re supposed to live out of our
relationship with our Father, in complete dependence upon Him. Jesus gave us
the very picture of this. Notice how
Jesus often broke the rules of religion and society and went against social
norms – which completely offended the Pharisees. “Oh, so we’re supposed to be rebels!” No, because at other times He flowed with the
rules and adhered to the customs of His day.
“Wait! So what’s the pattern
here? Tell me the formula so I can go
write it down and follow it.” There is
no formula. (This is what drives
religious people CRAZY!) Jesus lived in
a daily, moment by moment relationship with His Father doing whatever He saw
Him doing. Jesus wasn’t trying to set
rules NOR break rules. He was of a
completely different and foreign mindset to the rest of humanity. He lived in close relationship to His
Father. Jesus wasn’t His own guide and
He didn’t adhere to any particular set of principles. He only listened to His Father. His Father was His everything. So one day His Father would show Him to
attend synagogue. (Such a good Jewish boy!)
And the next day He would show Him to go talk to a Samaritan women at a
well. (Bad Jewish boy! Bad!!!) Jesus was directed by His love for His
Father. Jesus was not under the curse of
the rest of humanity. He didn’t know the
world of right and wrong and do’s and don’ts, He knew only His Father’s
Kingdom.
Jesus, being the first
born of many brethren, showed us the way to live. He made the way for us also to live like He
did, solely in relationship and continual fellowship with our Father; the
source of life. But sadly, many
Christians have sold out this beautiful relationship for a piece of cursed
fruit. They’ve chosen to live out of
principles, obligations, rules, and codes of conduct that they control so they
can be their own governors rather than in a joyous relationship with a loving
Father.
Now can you see why the
Christianity of rules and obligations is a religion of death? That’s not who we were created to be. When we choose to live under codes of conduct
or sets of principles we choose to live cursed. We aren’t pointing people to Christ, we’re
pointing people to the Law, which as Paul pointed out so clearly, leads to
death. Jesus is held up but then when
people draw near He is exchanged for the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of
Good and Evil. Now you know why so many
Christians are nasty and mean and look like they’ve been sucking on sour lemons
all day. They’ve been sucking on
something far worse! They’ve been
sucking on the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And since sucking on that fruit leaves you
cursed and empty so much of Christianity just goes on sucking.
Loren Rosser
