I am saddened at the things that I see happening that are labeled as “Christianity” or even “following Christ,” but it may not be what you think.
The setup for Jesus coming to Earth began with two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Jesus came to offer a return to the Tree of Life, “I have come that you might have life,” and we spend a lot of energy climbing either branch of the other tree.
The Tree of Life is the place where we, through direct connection to God and His Presence, the Kingdom of God, become and maintain our truest and intended God-created self. We live free.
Jesus offered a return to connection, “you must be born again,” which restores our soul.
The other tree is a tricky little plant. It has two branches and can therefore fool us easily.
The knowledge of good keeps us disconnected as much as the knowledge of evil. This tree sets up the human mind to evaluate everything through the lens of good versus evil, or behavior.
When we operate from this tree we ask questions like: Who is doing it right? Who is doing it wrong? What right thing should I produce through effort and will-power?
We ask, “How does Jesus want me to live?” expecting an answer about behavior and attitude.
The answer to “How does Jesus want me to live?” is not about values and attitudes. It is about source. From what source does Jesus want me to live?
Do we worship on the mountain or the valley? The answer is that we worship in spirit and truth. Not a behavioral answer, but a source answer.
The knowledge of good tells us what things Jesus wants us to do or how we should treat people. So we labor toward that end, and try to get others to do the same.
But we labor from our humanity, believing success will connect us to God.
What if, instead of success connecting us to God, it were true that connecting to God is success?
This is the function of the Tree of Life and the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Not “get it right,” but “receive My life.”
Both branches of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil keep us working hard at producing from our own resource.
Here is what saddens me: we can see that manipulators and abusers in the pulpit are a fountain of death. But what if we offer the opposite and find it is death too?
Death is not egalitarian or complementarian. Death is not Calvinism or free will. Death is not right or left.
Death is when we try to produce whatever we consider to be right from our own knowledge and willpower instead of connecting to, receiving from, and being indwelt by God.
So much talk about what type of stances and behaviors are or are not Jesus. But the bottom line is not the outcome of our lives, not what we produce.
The bottom line is whether we produce it, or whether we learn to yield to the move of His breath to us, in us, and through us.
I am saddened because all of the talk about which stance is right provokes us all to labor to produce instead of surrender.
You cannot produce by effort that which is designed to be released through surrender.
The life Jesus came to offer was not a life of us doing better. It is a life of Him living through us. You cannot produce that. You can only experience that by surrender.