Can we stop overcomplicating Christianity? Maybe we don’t even realize we are doing it, but sometimes all we need are fresh words to simplify and refresh our perspective… and consequently, our enthusiasm.
We worry about what we are supposed to be doing. We worry about following rules and argue about which rules matter. We worry about what we are to eat, what we are to wear, what we are supposed to think, how we feel, and how long we will live. We worry about what God wants and how we are supposed to accomplish it…
But, what if we are trying too hard.
What if the words we are so used to hearing have lost their effectiveness because we’ve heard them too much. We either reject them as canned and meaningless, determined to reinvent the wheel; or instead, take them for granted and assume that in their simplicity we are somehow “beyond that already”, intentionally seeking the next, more complicated step so we can be impressive.
But the reality is, it’s all simple.
Just imagine…
Once upon a time when the world was paradise, mankind had God. They knew Him, saw Him, and had everything handed to them on a silver platter. But, they chose to break faith, to blatantly choose against everything they knew in order to be “like God”, to rise above their station and decide they wanted to make their own fate without Him. (Genesis 3:4)
And the world was plunged into darkness.
Hardship, confusion, and suffering became fate of humankind and, instead of being faced with the option to choose against a God they knew, now we are faced with the choice to choose a God we don’t know.
Enter the classic: Why did God make us?
If you ever studied your Catechism as a child you might be familiar with the answer they made us all memorize: To know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him…
At first glance from our modern perspective, these “old fashioned” words make it feel like God is egotistical. He made us to be a bunch of little peons, cogs in a machine, bugs he can squish on a whim should He become displeased.
This doesn’t feel compatible with the fact that we taught to believe in a loving God.
But, what if we looked at it in a different light.
God created us because He wanted to love us. He gave us free will because our love would mean nothing should it be forced. He loves us, but, for our love to be free, we must decide if we love Him. It’s been that way since the very beginning. Only now we don’t get to make the decision from paradise, now we have to make it from our exile.
Have you ever seen Hitch?
You know the 90/10 rule? A guy can come 90% of the way but the girl has to come back the other 10% for her love to be free. If the guy goes the full 100% without her consent, this is considered controlling and abusive.
This too is representative of our relationship with God. God can come 90% but we still have to respond to Him for our love to be free. This is why God came to earth, because when we were shut away from God we could not know Him or love Him well until he revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
This is what this whole life is about…
It’s like a training ground, or a test… filled with opportunities to get to know God and decide whether or not we love Him back, to decide whether or not we choose Him once we accept Him.
As for “serving God”, if the only point of this life is to get to know Him and then decide if we choose Him, then the “serving Him” part simply means using all the means in our power and the talents at our disposal to share the knowledge and love that you have gained up to this point in your journey with as many people as possible so that others may come to know and love Him as you do. It’s not a drudgery, so much as a burning desire, a shouting from the rooftops this overflowing of love that we simply can’t contain. This “service” will look different for every person because each of us has our own unique relationship with the Master, but the goal is the same… sharing a God-sized experience of uncontainable Love.
What do all the other things matter?
People aren’t drawn to snobbery or unsolicited advice. They aren’t drawn to God by pharisaical or hypocritical behavior. They aren’t drawn to God by getting everything they want all the time… that only makes them forget their need for God and placates their desire for Him until they want something else.
But, people notice when people peacefully and even joyfully bear superhuman suffering. They wonder “how you do it”. In this way we are drawing others to Him. If our lives weren’t literally humanly impossible they wouldn’t speak of the power or the goodness of God, but rather of ourselves… and we are nothing. Nothing more than a beloved creation entrusted with a choice to choose God back and let Him use us to draw others to Himself through us.
We are nothing more than a beloved creation entrusted with a choice to choose God back and let Him use us to draw others to Himself through us. – ParticularlyCALLED
Why is this important?
Because even once we get to heaven we are still free! We have to fully know the God we choose so that there is no chance we’d ever change our minds. He truly does fully fill us because He made us to only be satiated by Him, but we can choose that we do not want Him. That’s what Hell is: eternal separation from the God we were made for, eternal blaming our demise on everyone else, eternal jealousy of everyone who made the opposite choice. Oh, there are degrees of Hell for everyone who goes there on purpose and for those who drag others there with them on purpose, but that’s not the point. Even in Heaven our whole purpose is to root for the people on earth who are seeking God and to plead their case before a God whose immense heart is absolutely breaking from unrequited love. The immense sadness of His heart is overwhelming to contemplate when He thinks of all the souls who do not want Him.
Why does it matter that we seek God?
To get to know Him. He hides Himself because there is no reason to put Himself out there to be trampled upon by those who do not even desire to know from whence they came or why. But, He is findable… if we truly put effort into seeking Him we instantly have thousands of happy souls pulling for us and cheering us on from the other side, begging God to give us a chance, begging him to reveal Himself evermore to each seeking soul, so that that soul can also more readily make the choice to love or not to love.
Loving God isn’t always easy, comfortable, fun, or even natural (in the sense that it would be something we are naturally inclined toward). With the fall and subsequent distortion of human nature, we have a tendency to look to ourselves first (remember, we want to be “like God”. We want to treat ourselves as the only purpose for existence) when really we exist to have the opportunity for a divine intimacy beyond our wildest imaginings.
I have created you with My capacity for love. – ParticularlyCALLED
This incredible intimacy, this union, this divine ecstacy for which we are created can only be ours if we choose it, and if we choose it, He has to prepare us to actualize our capacity for the union which He desires to give us. As creatures we have to grow, learn, and change. This is the reason for our trials, our challenges, our exercises in faith, everything the He asks of us to stretch us into the full actualization of our capacity. And everything else is merely there to support us in this journey, this epic adventure, this impossible miracle we are being beckoned to live.
And that, my dear, is the essence of the Christian life.
Heaven is union with God, Hell is the absence of Him. We are called to seek Him so that we can know Him so that we can decide if we love Him…. and should we decide that we do choose Him back, then our life becomes one of sharing this Love, this choice with everyone else around us. Encouraging them to take similar leaps of faith and becoming part of their story until He takes us to Himself where we continue to stay the course in our efforts to bring others to Him…. only then from the other side.
