Maybe

When I look at my life and at some lives around me, it seems we all somehow write our lives, make life-plans. There is nothing wrong about it at all, of course. You need to be “prepared“. But how much are we willing to consider our plans only as “for now“? It is very common frase, but many of us maybe do not allow Christ to change our lives. Maybe instead of asking God about his will we meet praying formalism and church pragmatism. We do things we consider as racionally correct and obvious. We are seeking for thing which are humanly manageable and maybe that we have our patience only there, where it makes “sense“. Maybe we already passed those “key“ life-tests and in our age we have the right view and do not need any changes.

Of course, I know that previous parragraph was a little bit exagerrated. As nothing is perfect in church, as nothing is imperfect in the church. That is why there is the “maybe“. Of course, we are all ready to change as soon as Christ says. We all realise we cannot do this on our own and we all even in the middle age opened to this God’s grace, which can turn our lives upside down. At least that is what we hear on Sundays. But what about our trained life-order? How willingly are we going to give it up? I understand that church wants to do missions, but it cannot, because money is the problem. But is it really the problem? How long have we been doing this? How long have we been used to certain way and direction?

Few months ago the contribution of one of my friends took my attention.  In the morning, with all his clothes, he stood up at the edge of the swimming pool (with quite cold water), he looked around and said: “When was the last time you did something differently?“ Then he jumped. After he got dried he found out he had left his mobile in the pocket and now the mobile was completely wet and gone.

I am sure that this is not a lie that many people practise the christianity, but do not practise Christ. I am sure that in many churches you can find Ten Commandments and I am sure that we give practical manual on life during the church servies and youths. I heard many times that bible is the life-manual. I love my bible and church, I believe that the bible is the word of God. But I do believe that the Son of Man is the Lord of the church, he is the Lord of the bible, he is the Lord of all plans and instructions and law – and he is even the Lord of the Sabbath! Will Christ find in our “christian principles“ a little hole for his improvisation? When was the last time you did something differently? Are you afraid that your phone will get wet? It’s not yours anyway.

Church is not cool, or what might be wrong

Recently I have been highly disturbed, even unpleased by situation in church/churches. I hear a lot of comments from various christians, taht church is full of hypocrytes, liars and so on.

This process of „suspition of the church“ is going on for a while, however, recently my so called „cup of patience“ overfilled. I watched few videos on youtube, which were testimonies of ex-christians about why they became atheists. I do not do any advertisement, when I tell you I was mostly moved by videos of users KT45, Lee Lemon and others.

After seeing some videos of those users I was not convinced, because their arguments were not convincing. But it was clear what is their problem, where is the thing that caused their leaving of God – it is church. Everyone of those man met at church, family of God, the hypocrisy, judgementfulness, gossip, forcing to something, manipulation, lots of rules and dogmas. I would like to belive, that this is just a problem of a few churches in America, because that would make the problem much easier to solve – because problem beyong the ocean does not have to be solved by us.

Unfortunately, I am afraid we are experiencing such problems here in Czech republic, or at least we are very about to have those problems. In last three months I heard plenty of innuendos at piercing, tatoos, smoking, alcohol, working in „dark“ society; I heard lots of rules about how to treat to thow who ask you for marijuana (the councel is: screw them!) and I also heard great frases like „This is about your priorities. Either God or the other thing.“

Yes, that is how those hypocrytes speak in churches. Forbide, command, judge. Their lives are set to the schemes. They love traditions and conservatism more then Jesus, who is untameable lion Aslan. They,...they...

Friends – we don’t speak german, so why do we say „they“ so often? It’s always THEM. C. S. Lewis in his book Great Divorce describes hell like giant world, where everything bad is caused by THEM; at least people from hell say so: „He did it, he betrayed me. They did not come to help me...“ Those victims of the hell also point how unfair the world was, how they were surrounded by hypocrytes. Maybe they looked after those hypocrytes so much, that they move out of their path.

Or maybe, this is the case, when everyone goes opposite and we say they do it wrong. Now there is need for God’s grace to show us that we are the ones who go opposite. I heard of man who visited over 10 churches a was not pleased anywhere; and he claimed those churched were horrible. If everybody goes opposite you, it is highly probable, that you go opposite and you need to admit this to your self with humble.

I do not want to ignore troubles in churches and wash those hypocrytes, but it is good to show the other side.

We bother that THEY judge smokers, while we judge them for hypocrisy. We bother about rules and commands, while we only move our head when we hear „cool phrase“. We hate traditions and that is why instead of shaking hands we traditionaly tap our fists. We find conservatism old-fashioned, so we spend our evenings in pubs, because „home is boring“.

We hate schemes in our life, while we save cool phrases of David Novák and Mark Driscoll to folder „Favorites“, but not into our hearts. We hide the fear from loneliness by „serving other people“, because they „need“ us. And instead of repentance we say we „search for God“, because repentance is too schematic. We need to proof ourselves that God is not against piercing, tatoos and other stuff, so we share it excited with our friend and we find our they never judged those things in the first place. The problem is only in our head. Is not this „proving to myslef“ some kind of scheme in your life?

Lying to people is weakness. Lying to yourslef is just a joke.

In the end we make Jesus more cool then he really is. We quote only the verses where God is strong. We love the part, when Jesus is angry in the Temple; but those verses, when Jesus humbles himself we hide for „later“, because the lion would seem to tameable after that. Jesus would not be so cool anymore.

Dear hypocrytes: would we love Him, if He wasn’t cool?

About the Winner

Recently, I have met questions about (an)surrances of the salvation. I am confronted with these question in the field of friendship but also in my own heart. How can I be sure that I am saved? It is, indeed, very simple question; many of you might give me a dozen of answers, which would, however, not calm me.

So how can I be sure that I go to heaven? In fact, that question is wrongly asked. Why? Because heaven is not a reason we do this. Most of us wrongly think that the Christianity is about following the Winner. Wrong! The Christianity is about following the Christ, who is “accidentaly“ also the Winner. You need to realise that aspect and think about it. Do you follow Christ because you love him, or because he is the Winner? So the question about the open gate of heaven should not be even asked. If God would not let us to heaven, would we leave him? If Jesus lost, would we leave him? Are we good warriors, who go with their General to the fight, carry theirs and his cross and also die with him? Or are we just the ones who are on the side of the Winner?

Enough to the spirit of the question, now we really need to answer it. We are just people and we need to be sure (or at least have a hope), that our General wins a takes us with him. And now I am not sure – I am not good enough and keep failing. Why would I be saved?

If somebody thinks God would not take him home, becuase he follows him wrongly, what can I say? Well, that’s dissapointing. Really – it is dissapointing, that we were given a sense for reason and yet we believe devil’s lies.

Jesus said, whoever takes his sacrifice and believes in it and also it the meaning it has, will be saved. That’s a promise. God is good and righteous, therefore he cannot change his promise. We can be sure (better would be “have faith“) about the salvation, because He made a promise. If I said it as a fool: By creating this gracing justice, God promises the part of his kingdom, and if we accept this promise, He will not be able to take it from us, even if He wants to.

Of course, some will shout, that we cannot clame with such arrogance, how God will judge. But if we must not have even tried to, we could already keep our bibles closed and “go the hell“.