Megaphone (Day 20 of Lent)

Growing up in the Souther Baptist tradition, I accepted lots of information that I didn't test on my own.  Most of that was from being a child.  But, there came a time when I got smarter and had the ability to test what was going into my mind.  Religion is a funny thing though.  Instead of asking questions about what I believed or didn't believe, I just moved on with life and didn't give it a second thought.  I figured that everything I knew was true and non-debatable.  I would have never thought that some of my beliefs would actually do me more harm than good.  Why would I need to question my faith, since I had no other gauge by which I was willing to test what I thought I knew?  

I was first questioned about my faith in a dimly lit room in a club, sitting across the table from my sponsor.  I didn't know it at the time, but my faith was driven out of fear.  My sponsor could see it, and he knew from what I was telling him that my faith was not my own.  When he questioned my conceptions of God, I got very offended.  The one question he asked me that still rings inside my head is, "How can you worship a God that you're afraid of?"  

I threw aside his question as if he didn't know what he was talking about.  I wondered if he had a clue who God was or how firmly I believed in God.  That was the last time I ever sat with that sponsor because I thought he was full of crap and was trying to "lead me astray."  

What my sponsor actually did that day was crack open a door into my heart that would eventually turn into a full blown rearrangement of my beliefs in God, Jesus, and spirituality in general.  I had so much fear about God that I was living in denial of his love.  I had so many conceptions about God that I had blindly accepted from childhood, and had never experienced such "faith-shattering" opposition as I did that day with my sponsor.  

But really, "How could you worship a God who you're afraid of?"  

In today's passage, Jesus is teaching in the temple in Jerusalem.  The passage covers the whole week of the Feast of Tabernacles, and he is spending the week risking his life and popularity teaching people that he is the Messiah, even though the whole city is observing the feast that points to "the coming Messiah."  It'd kind of be like going into a Wal-Mart on Black Friday, getting a megaphone, and proclaiming, "This is all wrong!  We have to stop consuming all this crap, and start sharing our stuff with the needy!  This is not how it's supposed to be!"

The crowds were split on Jesus' proclamations.  One side was convinced, and one side was enraged.  The Jewish leaders got the police and they wanted to arrest Jesus for causing such a disruption.  However, "it wasn't God's time yet."  They would get their chance to take Jesus in, but it wasn't time.  

As Jesus is making his stand in the front of the temple he says, "What I teach comes from the One who sent me.  Anyone who wants to do his will can test this teaching and know whether it's from God or whether I'm making it up.  A person making things up tries to make himself look good.  But someone trying to honor the one who sent him sticks to the facts and doesn't tamper with reality."

Jesus invites everyone to test what we believe.  For the Jews, the test was against Jesus' claims that he was the Messiah.  The Jews had preconceived beliefs that told them the Messiah was coming way in the future.  Jesus opens the door for everyone to ask themselves, "Are my beliefs my own, or have I blindly accepted someone else's?"  

Religion is a blessing and a curse.  For me, I've learned about some beautiful practices like Communion and Advent.  The negative side is, if I don't know what I believe then I'm prone to take whatever comes my way and accept it as my own.  I believe this is dangerous for anybody.

Many of us have given up on anything that has to do with religion because we felt that somebody abused it or abused us.  Many of us have given up on God or Jesus because somebody condemned us using their names.  Many of us know deep inside that the principles found in Jesus are great principles to live by, but in the forefronts of our minds are those people.  Every time we think of God we see the faces of those people who tried to jam Jesus into our hearts.  It's kind of like this:

Imagine if all throughout high school English class, the teacher told you the meaning behind every line of "Hamlet."  You didn't have enough time to read the whole book because it was too dang long.  Or, you just weren't interested.  You assumed that if you just listened to the teacher's explanation you would get the gist of it.  Therefore, you never really needed to read the book as you had the summarized version.  Lets say you're in college now, and you're taking a class on Shakespeare.  This time, the whole semester is about Hamlet.  The first night you sit down to read, you have all these preconceived "truths" and they act as a lens as you read each passage.  You're actually reading it through the lens of that high school english teacher.  Lets say that two weeks later, the class is having a discussion on the book.  As you listen to the other classmates talk about what they think, your heart starts beating a little faster and you start getting anxious.  They're wrong!  They're way off.  What they're saying isn't even close to what you've been reading.  

Even though you took the time to "read" Hamlet, you were never really reading Hamlet.  You had never set aside the information the english teacher gave.  You had never even considered it.  It was accepted as truth, and there's no way there could possibly be another way of looking at the same book.  

Reading the Bible should be no different than reading our favorite novel.  Jesus invites us to read his teachings with an open mind and not preconceived notions of truth.  He invites us to test every single line that we read, and to not form the "right" answer, but an honest one.  

I think that if we were all completely honest with ourselves about the scriptures, we could admit that we know nothing but believe a lot of things.  I believe that looks very much like "child-like" faith.  Whether we're clothed in religion or struggling just to make some sense out of life, we're all invited to test the scriptures on our own - not by somebody else's opinion or belief, but our own.  If we are truly interested in doing this, I think we'll find that what we were so afraid of in the first place had no substance.  I believe Jesus invites every one of us to seek truth, not act like we own it.  

Today's action:  List five things that we believe are the most important guides for how to live our lives.  Then, share them with a friend.