and covered it with a religious blanket
that has 'Christianity' written on it.
What I believe, part 10
"My Yoke is Easy"
We say it is difficult to follow the teachings of Christ. But it is only difficult because we plan our lives in such a way as to hide the truth from ourselves.
We tell ourselves that we have faith in Christ; and that this "faith" must never be questioned. Anything that tries to make us question the way we live is seen as an enemy of our faith. I have even heard "Christians" say that faith and reason are opposites. So if I should be able to show someone that Jesus is very clear about wanting his followers to obey him, my argument could be destroyed with the argument that it is built on the weak reasoning of a mind that is less than God's. There is no answer to the blind faith of one who follows the way of the world and calls it the way of God.
A short time ago, I had a talk with a very smart man who told me he was a Christian. He said that if we use the teachings of Christ as a pattern for what is right and what is wrong, we will be no better than all the other religions of the world, which are all trying to say what is right and what is wrong. He said that what makes Christianity special is our blind faith in what the church says.
So, in trying to be "special" we throw out that which is important to God and to every person on earth (that is, our understanding of what is right and what is wrong) and we put in its place teachings that no one understands… teachings that have been the reason for many wars. It is not important that the effect of these teachings is that we end up living as bad as, if not worse than, people who have no faith in God at all.
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| The devil has taken his way of life and covered it with a religious blanket that has 'Christianity' written on it. |
It is like the devil has taken his way of life and covered it with a religious blanket that has the name "Christianity" written on it, and people believe it really is Christianity even when a close look shows that it is very much the opposite. If it had not been for the "Christian" name on the way we live (and all the religious talk and actions that go with it), it would have been clear to everyone centuries ago that what we are living is not Christian at all. And it would have been very easy for anyone to understand what it was that Jesus Christ really taught.
It sounds very bad of me to say it, but at times I think that, if Christ had not come, and the Church had not been started, the world might have been much better by now. In all the religions of the world people were reaching out for little pieces of light. But when the true Light came, it was so strong, that evil people felt forced to make up lies to cover it, and to take over the Church.
From this, many many people have lost their faith. Today we have Christ telling us the truth, and all of Europe asks him, with Pilate (the man who had Jesus killed), "What is truth?" We have whole countries full of people who not only live without the truth and without a desire for the truth, but with a very strong belief that looking for the truth is one of the most stupid things you could do with your life.
The hunt for truth and for meaning in life, which Christ said was the most needed thing in the world, and which had always been thought of as the most important thing to do with one's life before the start of the Church in Europe, has now been laughed out of our lives as not being important. When I ask the Church what I should do with my life, what I get as an answer is, "Obey the laws of the land, and the laws of the Church." When I ask, "Why is there evil?" and "Is there anything I can do to stop the evil in the world?" they tell me that there is nothing I can do about it.
"Trying to be good only comes from pride," they tell me. "Just follow our directions on how you can save your soul, and then wait for a future life to come when there will be no evil."
If anyone finds it too difficult to agree with this evil world, the Church tells them that they can go and live in a cave or in some other building far away from the real world, where they will not shake the boat. Such people are encouraged to punish themselves for the sins of the world, but to do very little about changing the serious false beliefs of the world that Christ asked us to change. So the church gives only two choices: Fit in with the way the world is going; or leave the world and live alone in the hills. Most important in both choices is that either way, we must not obey or teach the teachings of Christ; that choice is not open to us.
But we see in the Bible that Christ lived his life in the middle of all the action. He went into the world and he gave them the truth. If truth is truth, it must work in the real world. If it does not, how can we believe it?
And what Christ calls us to is not more pain and more sadness. It is not bad news, but good news. He came to bring us something better than what the world now has. True, he tells us that people will hate us and hurt us because of what we believe. But he does not say that life for us will be harder than it is for people in the world. The opposite is true. He says that life for us will be "blessed", and that those who follow the ways of the world will be sad.
Christ did not teach blind faith in rules that have no meaning, and he did not teach a life of guilt and pain and sadness, by doing all we can to make our lives difficult. What he taught was a life of happiness that starts right here, and right now… in this life.
Peter said to him, "We have left all and followed you. What will we receive for this?" Jesus answered, "In the life to come you will have eternal life; and there will be people who fight against you in this life too. But seriously, I'm telling you that there is not one person who has left house and land and family for me and for my teachings who will not receive now, in this life, a hundred times more in houses, land, and family too." (Matthew 19:27-29; Mark 10:28-30; Luke 18:28-30)
Christ is honest about the cost of following him; but he does not say that we lose by paying it. He taught instead that the price is cheap when we put it beside what we get in return; and he did not even have to talk about rewards in heaven to prove his point.
Reason tells me that the disciples of Christ should be better off than the disciples of the world. Because the disciples of Christ are doing good to everyone, they should only be hated by the most evil people. But for the disciples of the world, where fighting for your self is a way of life, hate will be all around them. When it comes to things like accidents and sickness, I would think that both the disciples of Christ and the disciples of the world would have about equal measures of these things, but with one difference: The disciples of Christ would be prepared for difficult times, and they would see them all as having a reason; but disciples of the world, who do all that they can to run away from hard times, would not be able to see any meaning in them.
This is how I feel it would be. But is that how it is in real life? Let everyone think of all the worst times in their lives, all of the saddest, lowest points, all of the times of great physical and spiritual pain that you have been through and are going through. Then ask yourself if you went through all of this because you were a Christian, or because you were trying to get the things that the world wants. Be honest and think over your whole life, and I think you will see that you never – not one time – went through pain because you were a Christian, but that most of the sadness in your life came because you were trying to live by the laws of the world.
In my own life, which has been a very easy one in the eyes of most people, I can remember going through things in the name of the world's teachings that would have made me a martyr if I had been willing to go through them for Christ. All the saddest times of my life, from drinking too much and playing with sex in my student days, to the fights, the war, and so on, to the sickness and sadness that I found in my later life… all came with being a martyr to the world's teachings. And, as I said, I have had a very easy life. How many real martyrs are there for the world, who have been through much worse times than myself!
We do not think much about what we go through to be like the world, simply because we believe there is no way around it. It never crosses our minds that we could be free from this life that we now live, just by following Christ. We must open our minds to that choice if we want to think clearly about which way of life would be happier.
Look at the sad faces on people in the city, and think about all the people who have killed themselves in this world. These people did not die for Christ or for his law of love. Most people who die such deaths do so as martyrs for the world's teachings.
One wet Sunday I took a tram through the open shops in a part of Moscow called Sukharev. For nearly half a mile the car pushed through the people – thousands of them. Most of these people spend their whole day there. Many of them were hungry and dirty, and almost all of them were arguing with each other over the prices of the things that they were buying and selling. The same thing happens in all of the shopping places in Moscow. At night these people will turn to drink, or return to the corner of a room where they must sleep with many other people. And remember, this is how they spend their rest day! On Monday they will return to the work that they hate. But they are not slaves. They willingly choose to live this life as martyrs for the way of the world – to get all that they can for themselves.
They have left their families out on the farms, to move to the city, where they can get more money – the one thing the greedy world loves more than anything else. All of them, from the lowest workers, taxi drivers, and prostitutes, to rich business men and leaders of government – they all go through the most trying and difficult way of life in the city without ever finding what it is that they really need. Ask them, from the poorest to the richest, if they have enough money to be happy, and you will not find one in a thousand who has enough. They use all their strength to get what will never make them happy. As soon as they get what they think will make them happy, they feel that they need a little more. Today I buy a coat and shoes; tomorrow a watch and chain; the next day a couch, desk, and cabinets; then rugs and a piano, better clothes, race horses, expensive art, and so on until I become sick from all of my working for these things, and then I die. And this is more or less how we all live. Our hopes all turn sour in the end. How can we say that it is hard to obey Christ? It is true that Christ asks his followers to leave their families and farms. But he promises that they will become part of a bigger family, and that they will have more houses open to them in return… and that they will have eternal life on top of it all. Yet almost no one follows him.
Christ asks us to take up our cross and follow him; that is to say that he asks us to face what we all must face sooner or later anyway – death – knowing that we are following God. But no one follows him. Instead they follow the first person who comes along with an army uniform on, asking them to spend their lives killing other people until they themselves are killed. They are forced to walk long distances, through freezing ice and snow, often going hungry and knowing on the way that they are being carried to their death like so many stupid cows on their way to the killing houses.
But people are not stupid cows; so how can we agree to such a way of life without asking why? How can people go off to kill other people like themselves without knowing why they do it?
There are armies that cook their enemies on a fire, pull off their skin, and cut out their intestines just to be cruel. But tomorrow another uniform will whistle for them to come and the length of the line of their followers will quickly grow. Fathers and mothers will encourage their children to go. They will see it as a beautiful Christian thing to do. They are the martyrs, and not we. But for what are they martyrs?
I could think of following Christ as being difficult if it were not so much more difficult to follow the world. It is so dangerous to follow the world that Christ's "yoke" is easy when you put it beside the world's "yoke".
We don't hear much about real Christian martyrs these days, but it has been said that in eighteen hundred years three hundred and eighty thousand Christians have died for their faith. Yet for every Christian martyr there must be a thousand martyrs for the world. In this century alone thirty million people have died in wars. And this does not count all of the other ways that people die for the teachings of the world. If you did nothing more than choose not to go to war, you would be making a big step closer to the better, happier quality of life that Christ taught. Yes, they would punish you for it, sending you off to dig up the ground; but you would not have the blood of another soldier on your hands. By doing it you could be saving your own life as well. Then, if you stopped believing that you needed a gold watch or a sitting room or new clothes every month, you could save yourself many hours of worry and work too. You would have more time for your family and for others.
This is how it goes with each step you take in following Christ; your life becomes fuller and happier.
| With each step you take in following Christ, your life becomes fuller and happier. |
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Christ says that it is stupid to be angry with others and to look down on them. If you act like that toward others, how do you think they will feel (and one day act) toward you? Christ says that it is stupid to run after women when you can live with one woman for your whole life. If you destroy what you have with that woman, you only hurt yourself in the end. He says it is stupid to promise you will obey a person who may ask you to do things that are, in themselves, stupid or evil. He says it is stupid to hit an evil person, who will only become more angry with you and more evil because of it. And he says that it is stupid to think of people from other countries as enemies, because, if we do, that is how they will act toward us.
People argue that it is too hard to stand against a world that will not change. "We could be killed for not fighting in a war," they say. "A man and his family could die of hunger if he does not try to get money, and try to protect his wealth." But the people who say this do not believe it themselves. They have never tried to do it, and they have never seen people killed for following Christ.
Thirty million people have died in wars in the time that we have been alive. Many more have lived a sad life for the world's teachings. But where is the person who has died for Christ, or who has lived this life of pain and hunger and sadness that they say will come to all who obey Christ? This teaching that you will live a sad life if you follow Christ is a foolish teaching; the teaching itself shows how little they know of Christ's teaching.
Christ calls us to drink his cool, clear water, but we eat dirt and drink each other's blood because our teachers tell us that we will die if we drink Christ's water. Christ said, "If you want to know that my teachings work, all you need do is to try them." (John 7:17) But people die of thirst two steps away from the water, because they are afraid to drink it.
It only takes one drink of the water that Christ gives for us to see clearly that it is the fears and lies of the world that are destroying people, and not the teachings of Christ.
We have been thinking for centuries that happiness comes from getting more and more wealth. We have been thinking this for so long that when Christ tells us that wealth will not bring happiness, we think he is trying to take something good from us, and that he must want to hurt us. But he doesn't want to hurt us at all. He wants to help us and to give us true happiness. Just as loving parents will teach their children that fighting will not make them happy, so Christ tells us that we would be happier if we would just stop working for money. He says that we could be killed at any time for living a life of love, and he helps us to understand that the future is never ours to own. But this is not the same as a call to a life of pain and sadness. He is only saying what is true of everyone – with or without his teachings. Death is out there waiting for us all, but those who open their eyes to this truth will be happier in the end than those who hide the truth from themselves.
We so easily forget that the man who made bigger buildings for his grain still died in the middle of it all. We do as he did, and we throw away what we have – the present – working for that which can never make the future safe anyway. What we should be doing is living the present for the only one who can make our future eternally safe. If we would step outside of ourselves for just one minute, we would see that all we do to make our future "safe" really is not done to make the future safe at all. It is done to make us forget what our real future is. And this very action not only destroys our future, but our present as well.
In 1870, in France, people took up weapons to protect themselves, and this action to make themselves "safe" ended in hundreds of thousands of them bleeding and dying. That is what happens in the end each time a country makes weapons. In much the same way, a rich man thinks money will make him safe, and yet that same money is what makes a robber come and kill him in the first place.
Christ's teaching to live each day as if it were your last is much smarter than the world's teaching to get more and more money for the future. Both sides will die, but only one will die prepared and happy. Disciples of Christ will be poor, but that does not mean they will be sad. It may mean that they will live out on the land or sleep under the stars, that they will be hungry three times a day (just before each meal), that they will be so tired at night that they will fall asleep easily and sleep right through the night, that they will use their time to listen to and help others, and that when they die, their death will have meaning. Not one of these is a bad thing in itself. The truth is that a simple life teaches us to find happiness in little things that others never see. Christ said that being poor is the way of true happiness.
Those who think they will go hungry or die of thirst if they do not work for money should think of the words of Jesus that priests use to say their way of life is right: "The worker does not need to feel guilty when people feed him. So stay in a house eating and drinking what they give you." A worker can and should have all that he needs. It is a very short, simple teaching, but for anyone who understands it as Christ did, it tells you that just being poor does not mean you will go hungry or thirsty.
Living by faith does not mean that a person does not work. Life is boring without work. It is only work done in fear that is evil. Work done in love is not tiring. It is interesting, fun, and very spiritually rewarding.
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| Living by faith does not mean that a person does not work. |
The worst masters still feed their workers. They do not want the workers to become weak or sick. If they will do that for workers who hate them, how much more would they do it for generous workers who do their jobs with hearts of love and an enthusiastic spirit!
"The son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life for others." As we take up our cross and follow Christ, we too will work for others in love. You make your physical future most safe when you spend the present helping others, and not when you spend your time taking from others.
You don't need money in the bank to eat well. As long as the rich have bread, they will give some to their workers. In Russia alone there are millions of people who do not own land or have money in the bank; but if they work, they all eat.
The evil world will even feed its dogs. How much more will they feed a Christian who uses his or her life to help others! But you may ask, What if the workers become sick or for some other reason cannot work? It would be harder, but here, too, we see that in one way or another, the evil world feeds and nurses its sick animals and its crippled, sick, or old people as well. Why shouldn't the same happen for Christians? If there are not other Christians around to help us when we cannot work, I believe that God will use the people of the world to help us. And they will not let our children go hungry, for our children are the Christian workers of tomorrow.
It is true that most people are not happy to feed lazy people. But those who give their time to working for others will never go hungry. That is a truth that works any place in the world. And those who work as hard as they can, and who try to take as little as they can get by with, will be the ones that the masters will most want to have working for them.
| It could be argued that this one action started a miracle of love |
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This understanding about how there is enough for everyone comes to us from the stories of the feeding of four thousand people, and then the feeding of five thousand, with just five loaves of bread and two fish: Jesus had been preaching to thousands of people for most of the day. It was time for the people to eat, but they were far from towns or shops. A disciple told Jesus that he had seen a boy with two fish, and that they themselves had five loaves. Jesus knew that some of the people would have remembered to bring food, but others would not have remembered. (We know this because all four of the gospels tell us that there were twelve baskets used to hold the food that was left after everyone finished eating. The baskets must have been used by different people to hold food at the start of the meal.)
If Jesus did not do something, some would have food and others would go without. So Jesus started things going by telling his followers to give of all that they had.
It could be argued that the whole thing was a miracle. If it was, then Christ was teaching us that he can use a miracle to feed us when others are not there to help. But it could also be argued that this one action on the part of Christ and his disciples started a miracle of love. It encouraged others to put in what they had too, and when each person had finished eating their fill, there were twelve baskets of food left over.
In the old way of doing things, those with too much would have carried home with them what they had left. And those who had nothing would have been left hungry, watching the eaters with anger. It easily could have turned into arguments and fights. It would have been the way it is all the time in the world. But Jesus was showing them how it should be in the kingdom of heaven.
Christ taught that, when you give all that you have for God, far from going hungry, you will have full baskets when you finish.
So tell me which way is the smartest, safest, and happiest way to live: following the world's teachings, or following Christ's?