My mind is blown away today by this book I am reading, "When People are Big and God is Small". Our culture has redefined what spirituality is and what a relationship with God looks like. Here is a summary of the last chapter I just read, "These assumptions (from our culture today) have infected the church: the self as more important than community, the self as good, the exaltation of feelings and needs, and spirituality that is divorced from the death and resurrection of Jesus and a lifestyle of faith and obedience." This means that we focus on ourselves, look to our emotions for truth, say, 'screw you,' to community, believe that good dwells within us from ourselves, believe that there is some mystery in the world like God or something, and Jesus has nothing to do with anything! This is appalling to me not just because it's true of the world I live in but because many of these things cut to my core as well.
For instance, I exalt my feelings constantly. My feelings are a huge part of who I am. I talk about them all the time. I journal and pray to God about them. I share them with others. I base most of my decisions on my feelings. "I don't feel like eating what's in my fridge, I'll get take out." or "I don't feel like reading so let's waste away in front of the tv" or "I don't feel like trying to meet my neighbors so I will just skype with my boyfriend instead" What does this leave me with though? I find a higher authority in my feelings than God himself?!? Ouch! That is the reality of it. By basing my everyday life on my feelings, I completely leave Jesus out of the picture. I look to myself for truth and understanding just based on a feeling. I will be honest and share with you that much of last semester I really struggled with my time with God because I didn't feel his presence. I ended up distancing myself from him because I was upset for the feeling that I was missing. That's not Biblical at all! I am supposed to live by faith in Jesus Christ. That means praying and reading my Bible even if I don't feel like it. It means seeking God even when I don't feel His presence. It means to seek out guidance from others and actually adhere to what they say instead of looking to myself to see if I feel like I agree with them.
This is some hard truth. I have a lot of reevaluating to do. How much of life is comprised of things that culture says verse what the Bible says and what God says? It's a frightening reality. AND I just shared with you only one of the hard realities from this chapter! Imagine the other things our culture has imbedded us with that has nothing to do with Jesus Christ and we claim as truth for ourselves!
I want to join together in community and claim the truth that we know from Scripture. I want to share with people about who Jesus really is and not the psycho-babble we have come up with as a culture (even among Christians). I don't really know what this looks like. This is my first exploration of some of these ideas. I would love to learn with you. Let's figure out what this means together. Will you investigate with me and work towards shifting ideas in our culture?
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