Start Where You Stand

Christianity fails to explain and recommend Jesus’ teaching about how to live.

Worrying about salvation, about going to heaven rather than spending an eternity in torment in hell, completely misses the point of Jesus’ guidance on how to live.

When asked by someone about how they could achieve eternal life, in all three synoptic Gospels, Jesus’s answer is to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

What does that mean?

To love God with all your heart means that every emotion that passes within you should be worthy of God. Perfection in that respect is, of course, impossible, but we are not required to achieve perfection, just to strive in that direction. Jesus said the servant should emulate the master, not that he achieved the level of perfection of the master. Emotions like rage, envy, hatred, depression, despair, and boredom are not worthy of God. Jesus told us that we need to monitor our emotions and when they stray from thoughts worthy of God, that we bring our mind back to thoughts worthy of God: love, happiness, contentment, thinking well of others, and appreciating beauty.

To love God with all your mind means that all of your thoughts should henceforth be worthy of God. He wants your inner monologue, the radio that plays ceaselessly within your mind, to be of worthy things. Plots and schemes, self-doubt and criticism, worries and fear, must be replaced by other thoughts more worthy, or by quieting the mind and allowing oneself, for once, and more increasingly, as your normal mode of mind, to observe the world around you rather than analyzing everything. How often do we drive our cars on mental autopilot, thinking about anything else other than the driving. How often do we pass beautiful landscape with our thoughts on innumerable problems?

Again, as with emotions, our thoughts will wander into well-worn paths that do not serve us, but our commandment from Jesus is that we actively work to bring our emotions and thoughts to those worthy of God. This will improve over time as we become better at it. It’s a heavy lift, a life-long process.

For the apostle Paul, it seems that salvation only requires that one accept Jesus Christ as the son of God who sacrificed himself for the redemption of our sins, and believe that he died and was resurrected three days after. That’s a pretty easy lift. That can be achieved in a moment. Jesus gave us a much greater task.

To follow Jesus in loving God with all your strength means that every act that you do from day to day and over time should be worthy of God. All that you do should contribute towards our families and communities loving one another. To understand what acts I speak of, I will elaborate in a moment about Jesus’s last public ministry in the book of Matthew.

To love the Lord your God with all your spirit means that your spiritual life and spiritual beliefs and spiritual dealings with others in and out of the community of any church, should be worthy of God. Public demonstrations of piety do not meet the standard. Again, as in all things, trying to make our every thought, emotion, deed, and our spiritual beliefs, worthy of God, is something that we can progressively achieve in greater degree, and never will reach or expect perfection. Again, Jesus said we do not have to be the master, but we should emulate the master.

To follow Jesus is to commit to loving God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, not just accepting religious precepts as the path of your salvation. Overt recognition of Jesus as the Son of God is not even necessary for the salvation many seek. Jesus said this himself in his last public ministry in the Gospel of Matthew, where he addressed a crowd and said that for judgment, God would divide people into sheep and goats. Jesus explained that the sheep were people who,

“35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 37 Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” 40 And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” 44 Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” 45 Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’ Matthew 25: 35-46.NRSV

The crowd was confused. They said, “But we’ve never met you. We never did these things for you.” Jesus told them that when you do this to the least of these you do it also unto me. Then Jesus spoke of the goats, of which he said, “just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”

Contrary to requiring you to acknowledge that Jesus is the only Son of God, that he was resurrected from the dead, or acknowledging him as the only route to salvation, Jesus said that salvation arises from what we do in life in this last public teaching from Matthew.

Loving God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, is how we transform our life in thought, emotion, acts, and our religious thoughts and observance, to be ever more worthy of God. Yes, this is a heavy lift. Yes, it means our old life must pass away in making this fundamental rebirth in thought, emotions, acts, and religious beliefs.

This is the rebirth that Jesus wanted of us. It’s not a baptism ceremony. It’s moment to moment, every day.

I think all of Christianity should arise from the topics I’ve spoken of, so that we are living the religion of Jesus, rather than wearing the empty garment of the religion about Jesus. Jesus, and through him, God, is telling us how to live. As someone said, “If you know what God wants you to do, why wouldn’t you do it?”