In my last blog post, I outlined how we are called to love one another and yet we may not always agree with one another. Today, we will break down the “Best Life” idea and why this has led to so many people doing dumb stuff without thinking of the future consequences.
A popular slogan that people love to throw around is they are “just living their best life”. Joel Osteen and Oprah have pushed this phrase but I believe we have taken it one step further. Living your best life is often paired with someone doing some extravagant trip or purchase. How often do we hear of people buying stuff they can’t afford or doing things because everyone else is doing it?
I am not advocating for you to live a boring life and never leave the house. This sounds awful! However, how we steward our time, talents, money, and relationships is a direct reflection of our trust in God. All that we have is not ours, anyway. It’s God’s.
This is where your identity in God is vital. In God, you can have joy and peace. In God, you can find beauty and rest in your daily. And in God, you don’t need to keep up with the Joneses.
“Must be nice to ____________”. Be slow to compare your life to someone else’s. You don’t know what someone went through to get where they are at. You don’t know whether their home life is great or they have more debt that you could imagine.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Teddy Roosevelt
I like to usually write blogs in series, and this one is no different. This series is titled “Culture Clash” and will focus on how Christians are called to be unique (even weird) in our responses to culture. In our culture, we have become obsessed with the term “love”. Love is used when describing food, our loved ones, our neighbors, and our possessions. The Church (the people, not the building) flirts with a fine line between being in bed with culture and trying to be different. Heaven forbid we offend anyone these days!
We have bought into the lie that if we love one another, then we must agree with one another. This is unhealthy, unbiblical, and dumb. This view is unhealthy because it means we will bend to every person and situation for optics, not to upset the apple cart. Not only is this unhealthy, but this view of love equaling agreement is unbiblical because Jesus called people to being made whole. “Go and sin no more” hits differently than “you do you” or “live your best life”. Lastly, believing that we can only love each other if we agree with each other is dumb because it takes away from our God-given identity.
How does the Church respond to an often jaded view of love? We must operate differently. We cannot be silent, but we cannot afford to be nutty and nasty either. We must be balanced and sober-minded. Do you know a lot of balanced disciples of Jesus? As a pastor and a disciple, the one thing that I have seen more of in recent days is ragers—and many of them follow Jesus/go to churches on Sundays. These people rage in church. They rage in the grocery store. They rage on social media. They are ticking time bombs. Everything offends them. The typical response to these folks is to ignore them. And here is where we pay the price. It often gets worse because it is a spiritual issue and not just commentary.
There is a battle between good and evil today. This battle is not new, as it has existed since the Garden of Eden. God wants light, life, joy, and freedom for you. Satan wants darkness, death, rage, and bondage for you. Do you see the differences here? I will take this a step further: whom do you worship and what? Our posture towards what and who we worship flows into how we love one another. And when we cultivate a healthy approach to loving one another, we will not worry about offending each other. Someone will always be offended by you. Your mere presence will set someone’s hair on fire! But here is the beautiful thing: keep showing up.
Keep loving people that you disagree with. This does not mean to be a welcome mat to others. Set boundaries for yourself and who and what conversations you will have. I don’t engage in political conversations online because you cannot see my facial expressions, nonverbal cues, etc., and VICE VERSA! In fact, I rarely like these conversations in person because it is not something I am overly invested in. I would rather talk about you and what is going on in your life than what poison MSM feeds us today. Disagreeing with each other also does not mean that we hate each other. We have believed this lie recently (especially in the Church and it’s struggle with “love”) that is straight from the pit of Hell.
Java and Jesus 