I LOVE Being RIGHT

I love to win. I love to be right. I love rules and structure. I love to check boxes off and achieve. I think this is partly why I became a Christian, but sometimes it all feels like I was being sold.

Sold. Tricked.

Yuck. I hate that. This is what I mean….I am curious if you relate.

I was lured into Christianity with the idea of being right. Truth. This is what we claim and we brag. We have the truth. If you want to be right, we have knowledge of THE truth. Not just truth, but the TRUE TRUTH. We alone have it. If you want knowledge, we have it. We can prove it. There are apologetics, documents and PROOF. We have truth. We are right.

I was lured into Christianity with the idea of doing the right thing. I have always been drawn to morality. To purity. To goodness. And doing. I am a do-er. I like checklists I can DO. And I love the idea of doing the RIGHT thing. If you want this to, Christianity has it. We can teach you how not just to be good or pure, but to be RIGHT. We can teach you how to DO the RIGHT thing.

I was lured into Christianity with the idea of winning. I love to win, to achieve, to succeed. And we have that in Christianity. We even say "we WIN people for Christ”. If you’re a Christian, you are winning.

I was lured into Christianity with the promise of getting stuff. Success. Gifts. Happiness. God gives GOOD things to those he loves. God ANSWERS the prayers of those who believe. Yeah, you heard that right. He loves you and will give you all your heart’s desires.

Right? Aren’t these all true?

They are. All these things I said above are in the bible in some form. So we say them. And Christianity feels like a promise of a genie in a bottle, winning the race, succeeding in all we do, being good and kind, and best of all….being right.

Right?

Sort of.

These are all true….in a way. All of them I believe…in a way. I think I got stuck on these things for years. It is almost like I read the first chapter of a book over and over for years and loved the first chapter so much that I never read past it. Or I would try to read past it, but the next chapter wasn’t quite as awesome, so then I would end up going right back to chapter one. Cause that first chapter, well to be honest, it makes me feel like a hero. An awesome, strong, smart, amazing hero. The next chapter? Not so much.

The rest of the story is harder. Much harder.

What do I mean?

Want me to be more specific?

To me faith looks something like this…..

Chapter One.

Don’t murder.

Didn’t murder? YOU ARE A CONQUERING HERO!!

(Got it. I can do that. Not really a murder. I am totally a HERO. Nice. I am the BEST!!!!)

Chapter Two.

Love. Everyone. If you look at a brother/neighbor/friend/enemy with even a ounce of anger toward him…that is the same as murder. Even if he deserves it. Even if they are the worst and torments you with hate speech. You don’t get to hate them back.

You get to forgive. If you don’t forgive them, God might not forgive you.

All those Christian acts you did, that serving, that feeding the poor, those church services every Sunday? Scrap it. It all counts for nothing now. That doing you thought was achieving you something? You thought being a “good person” was going to give you favor in the eyes of God? NOPE. Not even if you go to church on Sunday and serve the homeless every week. If you hate your enemy AND you do everything you think is good or right, it doesn’t count anymore. The first thing actually voids all the other things. If you aren’t full of love, even for your enemy….just go ahead and scrap it all. You have achieved NOTHING. You must forgive your enemy. Scratch that…not just forgive him….LOVE HIM. Your enemy. The one who is the literal WORST person you know. LOVE. THAT. GUY. The one who doesn’t deserve it.

(WAIT……WHAAAAT?!)

Chapter Two has a lot of the following…….

• The truth isn’t any less true, but it is more….well….interesting. Less black and white. More nuanced. There is black and white and also shades of grey. The picture is more interesting, more beautiful, but also more complicated.

• There were rules are not quite so clear and easy. Rule A isn’t always RIGHT. For example, for some people rule A is the right thing, but for YOU rule A is the WRONG thing. And there is rule C that I could easily follow, but suddenly in chapter two I found out it had a part D as a contingence that I didn’t see before. That part D is much harder. Impossible actually.

• Winning isn’t the goal. Being LAST is actually the goal.

• Leading is not the goal. Being a servant is actually the goal.

• Achieving isn’t the measure of success. Surrender is success.

• God wants to give to you, but first you have to be willing to give ALL you have away. Everything you value and love. You don’t just get to add more to what you already have, but you get the old stuff replaced. In order for it to be replaced you might have to destroy the old stuff, or be willing to leave it behind.

• Good gifts aren’t always GOOD in the way that I thought. For example, good gifts aren’t always cookies. Because it turns out that non-stop cookies aren’t always good for you. Sometimes you need meat, dariy, fruit, and veggies. Veggies that you don’t want, and don’t like, are sometimes the ones that have the vitamins you NEED. If you don’t eat these veggies you hate, you could die. So the best “good gift” God can give you today is actually your least favorite food that tastes disgusting. The whole time you eat it you will gag and hate it...but you will thank Him tomorrow, I promise.

I am not winning at this.

Was I tricked? False advertising? Is it all just a lie?

Every wonder what Chapter Three says?

Chapter Three.

“You can do none of this without knowing me. You cannot do any of this without taking the time to stop and be filled with my love. None of it. You are like a car and the only thing that makes your engine run is my love. You keep trying to put other things into the tank and your car keeps breaking down and then you swear and blame me when your car breaks down. Love. That is what you run on. ONLY.MY.LOVE. You must come to me to fill that tank.

All that doing that you are DOING? Stop it. Now. Just stop. Please. Aren’t you exhausted? Tired? Weary? Fed-up? Stop spinning and doing and checking off lists. It is a waste of time. Just sit with me. Sit in my love. Let my love pour into you. Let my love fill you. That is literally all you need to know and do. Let my love fill you and the rest just comes. Easy. No trying, no doing, no performing. The lists will just get checked without ANY effort on your part. I know it sounds impossible, but I hope you will trust me enough to try it. It is like magic. I know it feels impossible…you have no time to do it…but just come sit with me today. Let me fill you. I have SO MUCH LOVE I want to FILL YOU WITH. I love you more than you could ever imagine.”

-God

Here is the thing. When we stop with Chapter One, that chapter that makes us feeling like a conquering hero…the one in which everything is black and white and we are “GOOD KIDS”….and we are RIGHT….if we stop there…we are full of control and pride. Ever meet a Christian full of control and pride? Me too. In fact I WAS a Christian full of control and pride for years and years. And I loved being there. It felt good. I liked the illusion that I was in control of my life. I liked achieving. I liked being right. I liked that I knew THE TRUTH and I could “righteously judge” others who were “lost” and I would pray for them in my pride.

I would turn to Chapter Two, and it made me uncomfortable, so I would turn back to Chapter One and read it again and again to feel good about myself.

Why do you think God gives us Chapter Two (above)? Why ask us to be last instead of first? Why be a servant to all? Why surrender instead of success? Why must we give it all away and lose everything?

What if Chapter Two is the lynch pin to Chapter Three? What if there is greater joy in surrender and rest than there is in achievement and success?

Maybe, just maybe, God has us eat the “veggies” in life, because he knows it is actually what is GOOD for us. Just like a parent knows what is good for their kids and can see the bigger picture.

Imagine that.

I have been in Chapters Two and Three a lot more in the last three years then I ever was for the first 40 years of my life. God has been stripping me of rules and my black and white thinking, letting me not just live in the grey, but enjoy the grey. He has stripped me of being first and ushered me into an season of anonymity and lastness. He is showing me what it feels like to be last, unseen, and under-valued. He has taken away my achieving so that I might find surrender. He has taken away my doing so that I might find rest.

I have been crying and fighting all this for three years. For three years he has been trying to read to me and instill in my heart Chapters Two and Three, but I have been like a toddler, screaming and fighting for him to go back and read to me Chapter One again. I wanted to work. I wanted to be first. I wanted to be the hero in the story. I wanted to believe I have control over my life. I wanted to feel better than others even.

But he won’t leave me in Chapter One anymore. In His LOVE, He knows this is NOT actually HIS GOOD PLAN.

Today I let him read Chapter Two and Three to me. Again. And I am starting to think there is more joy in these chapters then I ever found in Chapter One. More joy in surrender then in success. More joy in being last then being first. More joy in loving my enemies then in hating them. It’s wild.

What about you? What Chapter do you find yourself living in?