Most of us are internet savvy enough to ignore memes like this, but when my son got his first Facebook account I found he would often share these posts. When I asked him about it, his explanation was simple. He loved Jesus so he had to do it. He was too young to evaluate the claim before him so he just took it at face value and did what it told him. I explained to him that sharing a post on Facebook had nothing to do with loving Jesus and that the person who invented this post was creepy and the whole thing was probably made up anyway. I am not sure he understood, but he did stop sharing those sorts of memes.
I mention this story because it is an obvious example of Jesus' name being used to advance an agenda that is not his. In this case it is a simple goal: spread the virus. Most of us realize that Jesus is not really concerned with whether or not we share a meme. We are not so clear, however, when it comes to more important issues. How should we eat? How should we dress? How should we vote? We feel our faith should inform us with regard to these questions so we come to Jesus looking for answers. The problem is Jesus does not really address these issues because they were not really a concern for him. Still we are convinced there is a right answer and whatever that is must be Jesus' answer because Jesus is always right. So we go to whatever scripture we can find, we build our case, and then we say with confidence that Jesus supports us, and we wind up with statements like "Jesus doesn't want you to wear yoga pants.", "Jesus doesn't want you to eat gluten." or "Jesus wants you to vote republican."
As innocent as it may seem, this tendency to come to Jesus with our own set of questions is actually a narcissistic desire to control the conversation. At the core we still believe that it is all about our agenda but we desire Jesus' stamp of approval so we come to him asking the questions that we feel are important. When Jesus encountered people like this during his ministry he quickly dismissed them (Matt 8:22, Matt 19:16-22) because they really had no interest in following him.
Jesus warns Christians that his name will be attached to all sorts of agendas that are not his (Matt 7:22-23). This should be one of the more frightening warnings for Christians because Jesus is essentially saying "A lot of you Christians have actually completely missed the point." Apparently these Christians are all about Jesus, they all do all kinds of great things in his name, but they are advancing an agenda that is not God's and so he does not consider them true followers at all.
Of course at this point most of the Christians he is talking about will respond with a resounding "Amen!" and then go on to continue following whatever other agenda they have and assume it is Jesus'. In my high school youth group we believed that the best thing we could do for Jesus was convince as many people as possible to say the sinners prayer before they died so they wouldn't have to go to hell, so we went around with a little gospel comic and we shared it with people, and we were convinced that we were doing Jesus' work. As good as our intentions were, this still was not what Jesus was talking about.
So what was Jesus talking about when he said "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven but only those who do the will my father in heaven." What is the will of the father? and why isn't Jesus more clear about it? In fact he is clear. He follows this statement by saying:
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
These are the concluding words of his longest and perhaps most well known sermon in which he describes his ethics at length. He is clear. Doing the will of the Father means following the commands in the sermon. You can read it for yourself. Its Matt 5:1 - 7:27. It describes a relentless, self sacrificing, commitment to justice, and offers some commands that western Christians have generally ignored like the rejection of wealth (Matt 6:19-24) and the admonition against judging others (7:1-5). It says nothing of same sex marriage. It says nothing about how the world was created. It does not mention drugs or alcohol, and it does not give any advice as to the media that should or shouldn't be consumed by Christians.
All this is to say: Watch out! Beware of other agendas! As good as they may seem they are in fact worse than not following Jesus at all because they fool a person into believing they are following Jesus when in fact they are on another path. Truly following Jesus does not mean using him as an answer to all of your questions, it means allowing him to set the agenda, allowing him to determine the questions that are being asked, and being willing to live out the answers he provides.
I alway encourage people to compare stories and posts on the internet to their Bible before they get suckered into some false teaching or scam. Spend a few more minutes using other resources, like gty.org, on the internet for guidance.
ReplyDelete