Sunday, November 18, 2007

A Novel Approach.

Lately it has become exceedingly apparent that most people think that Christians are bland, unoriginal and boring because we follow a God who has rules. He has these because He created everything and therefore understands how things work. So because of that fact He can makes all the rules He wants. Now He does this for our own benefit, and most of the time we don't see this because we are not God, but "clearly" as my friend Marlene would say they are for such a reason. Moving on, the general consensus is that being a christian is lame because you are bound by these regulations and therefore become stuffy, rigid and obstinate to the world that is breaking the very rules you are trying to follow. But Paul paints a very different picture in Galatians Chapter 5. He states to a people that oddly wanted more rules in order to be a christian( i.e. circumcision, food regulations, etc.), that It is for the very fact of freedom that Christ has set us free. This is the freedom to be unique without being sinful(I believe the Christianese word is holy) by not doing the things everybody else is doing. That is what it means to to be uncommon, individualistic and unique. This striving to be different from everybody else is only accomplished when you stop trying to be different from people and start trying to be like Jesus. You see Christ was the original avant-garde. He was so radically different from everybody else, including the religious leaders of the day that eventually they got so sick of trying to one-up him that they just decided to do away with Jesus by crucifying him among two other different(but in a vastly contrasting way)people. So, may this be a warning to all of you, being an individual is dangerous. Although you probably have nothing to worry about if you are just trying to be different from people. You are human and can never get away from that, so in effect you will always be like other people. But in the journey of becoming like Christ, you will always face opposition because that is when you truly stand apart from the crowd because sin is not different, Holiness is.

No comments: