Heart Vs Infrastructure

I disagree with the notion that one has to be in a particular camp (religious or non-religious) to experience God.

Saint Teresa of Avila was a Carmelite nun. Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen in a monastery. And yet, both of them experienced God deeply and intimately.

The infrastructure is irrelevant; it is not the medium through which we connect with God. Heart is, and it does not care if the physical body is in a monastery, megachurch or the loo.

Why I Like This Video

 

This is one of the most popular videos on YouTube that is getting a lot of hits lately. It is liked and disliked by many for several reasons. 

I like it because it pops the self-righteous bubble that is seen in churchianity and briefly touches on the differences between the man-made religion and the gift of God through Christ Jesus.

I hope and would like to believe that the word 'hate' is not directed against a group of people that differ with his views. If it is, welcome to yet another branch of Christianity, which has close to 40,000 denominations.

I am siding with the idea that his feelings are targeted towards the religion, which to me is not an institution or a group of people, but a mindset that makes one run on a never-ending treadmill to "please God".

Old VS New

Thanks to the internet, we now have access to a ton of Christian messages than our earlier generations. We no longer have to be limited by tunnel visions!

While I'm thrilled with this convenience, I'm not attracted to a message, book or an article, simply because it is tagged "Christian". 

What I look for is, if the content is rooted in Jesus' perfect work on the cross.

Narrating the parables of Jesus or quoting 10 scriptures from the Gospels simply for the sake of it won't cut it, because Jesus was still living under the old covenant. 

Contrary to the popular assumption, the new covenant starts only after the resurrection and not with Matthew Chapter 1. 

Selah  ; )

So how do we know that the messages that we listen to or the material that we read stems from the old or the new covenant?

Under the old covenant, I get to bear a nice-looking, but a heavy yoke of trying to earn the blessings. My ego gets to be the star. The blessings or curses are hinged on my performance.

Under the new covenant, Jesus did all the heavy lifting; we are freed from the yoke and are liberated, once and for all. Jesus is the star here and through His obedience, we are made righteous (not self-righteous). Grace or Unconditional Love is the oxygen that we live in. Under this covenant, we are God's masterpieces, not unworthy worms.

Are you a Parrot or a Seeker?

"seek, and ye shall find" - Jesus

Parroting is easy. It's a life of staying on the surface. Someone does the thinking and interpretation for us. And we faithfully parrot "the truth", or so we think.  

Seeking is hard because it requires us to leave our comfort zones. It requires us to ask hard questions. It may sometimes lead us to swallow our pride and admit our ignorance, which may not be a pretty experience for our ego which thrived on "being right". In this journey, we may be ostracized by our churchy contacts and the so-called friends.

Regardless of the challenges, the journey of the truth-seeker is worth it, if the desire is to be in union with the Truth, instead of dogmas and concepts that merely puffs up one's head.

True seeking, however, will not begin until we experience the emptiness of floating in the Parrot zone.