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.

Happy Birthday, Who?

I used to do the whole CHRISTmas thing sincerely, yet blindly, until it dawned on my bright head that we really do not have any solid proof that Jesus was born exactly on the 25th of December.

Nevertheless, I still appreciate this season because of the beautiful spirit of giving. I wish it is not just limited to Christmas.

The real reason for the season, as I see (a purely personal view), is Love and not a religious agenda.

One can, however, pretend that this is about Christ, and it is absolutely fine, but pushing that idea on someone who does not believe in Jesus is not Christ-like. Christ was never a bully.

With that as the backdrop, I wish you a very merry Christmas and happy holidays (or work days, depending  your work schedule!).

How to Love Unconditionally

In this post, I said about being the conduits of unconditional love.

But how do we love unconditionally? 

It is easy for me to love my nice elderly neighbor or my best friend. But the rubber meets the road when the object of our love is someone who hurt us or others. How do we love this person?

The easiest way is to not equate the so-called "offender" which his actions.

But in most cases, we cannot love a person unconditionally, if we trust in our strength alone. If you have any doubts, try loving Hitler, or someone who hurt you.

Unconditional love is not something that we can manufacture. It is the fruit of the Spirit that manifests as we remain in Christ Jesus. 

True, we see the fruit on the branches but notice that the branch does not strive to bear fruit. It is His Life within us that helps us bear His fruit, for we have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us; and the life which we now live in the flesh we live by faith of the Son of God, who loves us and gave Himself for us.

There will be a fight initially in our mind, especially if we are usually prone to be driven by the dictates of the ego, which is not in alignment with the Spirit, Who is housed in our spirit. But the more we cease from our striving and emotionally rest in Him, acknowledging our inability to bear His fruit, the more we will see His rivers of living water saturating us and flow through us. 

The fruit of the Spirit then will no longer be Christian-speak for us, but a living reality, which will not be dependent on others or the circumstances, no matter how grave or bright the situation is.

Freedom is a Choice

Ego is the part of our mind that keeps us wanting which in turn produces pride, sadness, anger, worry, insecurity and judgementalism towards others. The source of any negativity can be traced to the ego. It literally is a heartless taskmaster that drains one’s emotional energy.  

For the ego, the answer is always “out there”. We subscribe to its edicts in hopes that it will fill the void in us that we so desperately want to be filled. “Follow my prescribed path, for then, will you receive that which you seek for”, says the ego. But to our chagrin, we discover that the happiness or the freedom promised by the ego is nothing but an unreachable mirage.  

The simple fact of the matter is that, the ego is a bully and bullies are epic weaklings within their core. It thrives on imprisoning the heart, but it does so by not realizing the fact that the heart has the power to rewrite the mind.  

Freedom begins when we realize that the heart is infinitely more powerful than the mind. Authentic emotional freedom has nothing to do with anything that comes from without. Nothing and not one human being can grant us freedom. Freedom is experienced from within.  

One way to experience that freedom is by loving unconditionally. Love is a power source that transforms our mind. It is similar to the water gushing out of a hose. Before the water hits the plant, it saturates the hose from within. When we meditate and speak negativity, no matter how justified we think we are with our assertions or how factual we think the thought is, the negativity soils our mind and binds us. But when we proactively and unconditionally love, it saturates us first and sets us free, free to be ourselves and to be effective conduits of Love.

What are we known for?

The "world" that we so love to judge, condemn and criticize is not moved by our knowledge of the scriptures or the lack of it, whether we follow or reject a particular doctrine, whether we pray in tongues or flow in the gifts of the Spirit, or not, if we are churched, unchurched or home-churched, whether we fast or feast, whether we follow certain rituals or not, whether we give or not; if we cannot love unconditionally, then we are nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

But who said we don't love? 

Sure, we do love the birds of the same feather. We love those who speak in fluent Christianese, we love those who dress, look, act and think like us. But that would be conditional love. In other words, our love is towards the standards that we expect to see in others - it is not towards the actual person, which leads to the natural conclusion, that there is zero love in conditional love. 

If we were to die tomorrow morning, what would we be known for? That we were self-important, hate-filled, judgmental, Bible-thumping bigots? 

Or will be known as vessels of unconditional love, because that is exactly how Jesus loved us and Who he is. The only groups of people who upset Jesus, were the religious ones, not "the world".

Well, who cares how we are known for?

That may partly be true, considering the fact that no one can make everyone happy. The goal here is not to be more 'likable'. The bottom line is, God is Love, and as his ambassadors, may we be known as conduits of that Love. If not, what "the world" sees is just another empty label. 

Few scriptures to meditate:

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." - John 3:16 NKJV

"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." - John 3:17 NKJV

"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:8 NKJV

"...love is the fulfillment of the law." - Romans 13:10 NKJV

1 Corinthians 13, the whole chapter.

"If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well;" - James 2:8 NKJV

"He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." - 1 John 4:8 NKJV

"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." - 1 John 4:11 NKJV

Truth vs Interpretation

The Bible is an ocean that cannot be limited by one interpretation. When we think we have the handle on the truth, what's usually happening is that we are merely backing one interpretation of the truth.

The Christian world is littered with interpretations. The last I checked, there are close to 40,000 Christian denominations. 40,000 groups saying, "I'm right". And each one of them base their positions from the same manuscript.

Interpretations are often mistaken for the truth. Yes, there may be nuggets of truth in them, but, in my view, it can never be the complete picture. God will never be contained in our favorite doctrinal bowl. We won't see the full spectrum until we cross over.

Worship and Ferrari

Most of us love cars. When we see a Ferrari, our reaction is instant. We drool. We do not have to work up an emotion or need two upbeat songs to get to the joy frequency. 

But when it comes to worshiping the King of kings, we need two songs just to get warmed up. And then the Worship Leader has to cajole us to raise our hands or praise Him.

Why is this so?

Simply because we haven't seen who Jesus is. Yes, we are familiar with all the Bible stories and the formulas to work the Kingdom principles. We are thorough with the doctrines and have memorized a ton of scriptures. We know a lot about Him, but barely know Him.   

But the more we meditate on Him, the more we get a revelation of Him, no one will have to coax us into praising Him. The reaction will be natural. True worship is natural, and not a legalistic requirement. We worship Him, not because He is insecure, but simply because it will be a natural reaction as we behold Him. And it won't necessarily be limited to a "worship session" or while listening to a "worship music".