Jenn and I attended a community Good Friday service today, and I came to a conclusion -
Christians are crazy.
Seriously, if I weren't already a Christian, I would have thought Christians were totally nuts, sitting in a service singing songs, praying, and listening to a talk which could all seem quite "cultish". Now don't get me wrong - I believe totally and completely that I am created by a God who loved me enough to have a plan to save me from my sins (and I don't think I'm crazy because of that belief), but I think it's easier for me to hold that belief because I was introduced to it at a young age, and now have experienced the true love and the change that comes from knowing Jesus. In this post, I'm not even going to mention all of the evidence for both God's existence and Jesus' life and ministry that I've learned throughout my life - maybe another post on another day...
The point is, If I walked into a church for the first time at the age of 22 with my engineering degree and my overly cynical outlook on life, I'd think Christians were nuts.
I believe completely in God and Jesus' death on the cross, but have always looked at some of the other religions in the world and wondered at how silly or wrong or confused they might seem. But recently I've been struck with how silly Christianity must seem to the rest of the world. I suppose all I can do is do my best to let the world see how Jesus changed my life, and know that the Spirit of God is behind me, hopefully patching up the gigantic failures I leave in my path.
But for now, I'm looking forward to celebrating Easter on Sunday with all my crazy friends.
3 comments:
Well, yes, it does seem a little crazy. I think it would help if every church service were somehow grounded in some of C.S. Lewis’ logic. It’s beyond our mental abilities to understand God and how He can save us, so I think the pictures of God that we find in church traditions and hymns may be more important than we know, even if they look nutty to some. Communion looks forward to our first feast in heaven. Baptism is a picture of getting ourselves pickled in God’s love. It’s the mental pictures that stay with us.
I think about this often, and like you, I absolutely believe in the existence of a loving creator, and I believe that Jesus lived a sinless life and died for our sins... but if you stop being ACCUSTOMED to these beliefs for a minute, you realize how extremely bizarre it all is.
I had the same thought this year. We hold to a nutty set of beliefs...which all happen to be true. But they sure sound nutty if you listen to yourself from an outside perspective for a minute!
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