So what does being a Jesus’ follower look like?
Herein there is much confusion and misunderstanding. After all, if all you knew
about Jesus and God were what you saw in people who called themselves
Christians, what picture would you have? Would it be positive, progressive,
open-minded, inclusive, humble, and extravagantly compassionate? Or would it be
exclusive, traditional, judgmental, critical, arrogant and self-absorbed? Or
would it be a mix of the two? What would you learn about Jesus and God by
simply observing Christians?
Admittedly, no one, no matter what their views
of life and religion, is perfect. No one lives in complete alignment with their
cherished values. No one lives consistently in congruency. We all are
challenged to “practice what we preach.” That seems to be a painful human reality.
So we are hard put to have the audacity to judge others.
That said, however, how we live our lives does
go a long way toward giving credibility (or not) to what we believe. And so it
is significant that Christianity embraces much more than simply what a person believes
and values about Jesus and God. Christianity (being a follower of Jesus)
involves not only cherishing Jesus but especially cherishing Jesus’ way of
living. Central to following Jesus is placing His values and what He came to
reveal about God as the pattern for contemporary living.
So what should that look like? Over the next couple of days we are going to examine this a bit closer.
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