“Following Jesus isn’t about obeying a bunch of rules.”
We were doing a Freedom Tour event, so I was watching the sermon remotely. But if I’d been in the room, I would have done something uncharacteristic.
I would have shouted, “Amen!”
Too often, religion constricts folks by forcing them to follow rules Jesus never made or endorsed. In fact, when he was asked, Jesus listed two commandments.
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
He said all the rest of the law hangs on those two basic commandments. So, we can do all the other stuff, but if we miss those two, we aren’t living the life Jesus invited us into.
For most of us, me included, that means changing our thinking. Because when Jesus said, “Love your neighbor,” he wasn’t talking about folks next door or people we like.
He was talking about loving those who might be the most difficult to love.
Let’s think for a minute about teaching a child at the Home of Hope about following Jesus. You could do all the Bible stories and the typical kid stuff, but at some point in their development you’d have to get real about LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR, about what Jesus really meant.
It would mean the child would have to find a way to love the people who trafficked and abused them. Not to excuse the behavior, because there is no excuse. But to love them in spite of what happened.
To learn to forgive.
I have nothing in my experience to tell me how difficult that would be, but Jesus knows. He knows love and forgiveness are the only path to the full life for which he created us.
He knows you cannot love God without loving those created in his image. It’s simple.
And it’s very difficult.