Loved People Love Others
I’ve noticed that Christians who have developed an outward-focused approach to life tend to deeply believe that they have a heavenly Father who liberally loves them. It is an act of faith. I’ve sat with believers who’ve told me “I just can’t believe that God really loves me.” There are times when I’ve said to them, “Wow, that’s too bad…because it’s not true. But if you want to believe a lie about God, that’s up to you.” This is simply about choosing to believe and act on God’s word rather than how past experiences have affected you. You can choose to believe the One who gave His Son as the ultimate expression of His love or you can choose not to. But real faith is activistic; it’s not sitting around hoping something’s true.
I love the Message translation of Luke 12. Jesus said, “What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.”
You can either choose to believe that and get a whole new worldview or you can debate until you’re blue in the face. Everyone chooses what their truth source is going to be…and ultimately, every “truth source” will be outside of yourself.
When I first became a Christian I worked with a man who liked to argue about the credibility of Christianity. His point was that no one could really know, no one could be certain. He was into the writings of a philosopher named Krishnamurti.
Krishnamurti was an interesting guy. In the early 1900’s, he was only fourteen years old when he was adopted by a group of people called the Theosophical Society who believed he was the coming World Teacher, to be the reincarnation of Christ in the West and of Buddha in the East. He was groomed as the next messiah. At one point they believed he would visit Australia by walking on water (he took a boat instead). But in his mid-thirties, he renounced everything, saw it all as a sham, disbanded the group who believed he was the messiah, and left. He later wrote that “Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever…”. In essence, all you can really trust is yourself; no authority can come from the outside.
One day my co-worker said to me, “Krishnamurti basically says you cannot trust anyone as a source of spiritual knowledge and authority except for your own self and your own senses.”
I asked him, “So why should I believe him?”
God is deeply in love with you. That’s a truth that comes from outside yourself.
Dave Workman | Elemental Churches
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