A Few Thoughts on What Christianity is About

What is Christianity About?
In My Opinion

Is Christianity all about following the rules of do or do not? Or is it more about enlightenment in relationships that flow from the heart? Jesus said, “You are the light of the world… and out of the heart flow the issues of life… for out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.” If you look at all these descriptions they all deal with how we relate to each other. Evil thoughts are a generalized description which can mean anything. Murder is the want to end someone’s existence. This is relational because if we murder them we are no longer in relationship with them. Adultery is bringing another into the intimate place of relationship that was promised to only one person. This is also a relational term. If you look at the other issues you see these are all relational terms.

I believe God wants us to be good relationalists (relationalists is not an actual word, that I know of, so if it is not an actual English word, I get first dibbs on coining it ?). He calls himself by terms like father, brother, and comforter, these are all relational terms. God sets himself as an example and says to love others as I have loved you. This statement has an implied statement and maybe an un-implied statement. The implied command is to love, which however you tend to define love, is a relational term. The un-implied statement is that we must come into a relationship with God to be able to receive his love and therefore to love others as he loves us.

What will this relationship look like to you? I don’t know. Just if we both have a relationship with a mutual third party friend, both of our relationships will look different. You and the other person might like to go fishing together and talk about the deep aspects of your relationship with others, where my relationship with the other person may consist of talking about how to help the homeless on the street.

As an example of this relationship with God from my personal life: I was sitting there one day and my thoughts were peacefully floating here and there and I heard this thought that said, “You have issues of spiritual pornography in your life.” I thought, “What?” (Yeah, it was a very intelligent well thought out thought). The thought repeated in a kind and gentle voice, ‘Yes, you have issues of spiritual pornography in your life?” (I had no clue, I had never thought of such a term, we all know what pornography is, but what is ‘spiritual pornography?). “Well James you have all these images of me in your mind that you gain great satisfaction from, like you have a picture of me as the Mighty Lion of the Tribe of Judah, fierce, wild, bold, strong, with the wind blowing through my hair, and you have a picture of me in your mind about me as sitting on this mighty throne in heaven with glorious light blazing from me, and you have a picture of me as hanging crucified on the Cross, yet what is pornography?” (I learned that if I feel he is actually asking me a question then I probably don’t know the answer). I shrugged in my spirit and the thought continued, “Pornography is having intimate pictures of a person when you yourself are not in the picture (I know there are technical definitions that can be applied here, but it made huge sense to me; it floored me). I said, “Wow, I am so sorry. I repent of my pride in having these mental images of you when I am not actually relating to you in real life in these images.” I got to thinking about this and, yeah, I have a mental photo album with pictures of me and God in it, but in my spiritual intimacy I was gaining satisfaction from intimate images of God with out relating them to him in those contexts and daily experiences.

So, as I look at these thought I was having, first of all I had no clue what the thoughts were talking about. None. Second the thoughts described the nature of these thoughts and dealt with an issue of relationship that I had to admit I was guilty of. I thought, “how would I feel if someone, even if they did know me, had pictures of me fishing and catching huge fish and were bragging to everyone about their relationship to me as the great fisherman, when they had never been personally fishing with me”. It would make me feel weird.

My third thought is that it had nothing to do with anyone else; it only had to deal with me. Fourth there was no sense of condemnation in the thoughts; they were gentle, loving and kind. And my personal thoughts about myself have had a tendency to be harsh and condemning (but I am working on that one). Fifth, it led me into self realization, self discovery, repentance, and change. Was that God talking? I tend to think so. Those thoughts were definitely higher that my thoughts.

Therefore, should you believe every thing I say because I thought I talked with God? No way. And I don’t want you to. If you think there may be a God and you want a relationship with him, go find him yourself. If I had all knowledge of God and told you everything about him would that establish your relationship with him? No. Do I write to tell you what to believe? Heck no, go find out for yourself! Do I write to inspire possibilities in you? Yes. I do write to inspire the world of possibilities in you. If you say, I don’t agree with him on this and that issue but I never thought of that, I wonder if that is possible then I will be happy for you. If you blindly follow everything I say I will not be happy for you, because you have shut off a God given ability inside yourself and you are just being lazy. If you follow teachers blindly all you have become is a robot following a programmer’s commands to do what ever the programmer says even if it leads to your destruction. For as any programmer knows, not all programs work for all computers, and who wants a bunch of robot for friends? And I may be wrong, but I don’t think God wants a bunch of robots for friends, that is if he does exist? For if God does exist and he really loves mankind, and he is one tenth of the God he claims to be, then is it possible that he is the most awesome, wonderful, awe inspiring being in the universe? I don’t know about you, but if he exists he is definitely on my ten most wanted beings to meet in this universe.

(And by the way, from all the experiences I have had it would take straight denial for me to say that God doesn’t exist)

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