The Gospel according to Jesus

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any word in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. ‘My God,’ you will say, ‘if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I every get on in the world?’ Here in lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”
- Soren Kierkegard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. Charles E. Moore (Farmington, PA: Plough, 2002), p.201.

Have I been a true follower of Jesus today?

“To say: “No! Lord” is a contradiction in terms. Yet many within the Christian church want the comfortable compromise of conditional discipleship… But the truth is uncomfortably clear: if Christ is not Lord of all, he is not Lord at all.”
- David Watson (Discipleship, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981 p. 24)

I have a strong suspicion that much of the theology that gets debated one way or the other, much of the theology that I even hold dear might really just be a mechanism that mankind has devised in our ever active and often subconscious rebellion against God.

God’s Word is not hard to understand, there are a few difficult passages here and there but the overall message and teaching is simple, after all Jesus did not come to the learned and the religious leaders but to the poor, the sinners and the outcasts.

The challenge is to stop making excuses for our wicked self serving hearts and just get on with the business of obedience to our Rabbi. Preach the kingdom, heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead and help the needy in any way we can. Live a simple life, live an obedient life.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. (James 1:23, 24 ESV)

I am preaching to myself more than any one else!