There is one thing about it though that tends to get under my skin. At any point in time it seems like fifty percent of the forums consist of the following question: "Is this or that (insert a random action such as getting a tattoo, wearing a certain style of clothing, watching a certain movie, listening to certain music, etc.) a sin?" And my response is usually something like this, "Really? Is this what we are to focus on?"
Today I realized why it bothers me so much, and it reminded me of something I learned in the Army.
When I was a young officer they taught us how to navigate in the wilderness. When I first started I would pull out my map, figure out where I was, what direction I had to go, how far I had to travel, and start walking through the woods, eyes glued to my compass. Invariably I would wander off course and fail to reach my point. After a while I learned a new way of doing things. I would figure out the direction I needed to go, and pick a recognizable feature along that line of travel and start walking in that direction. This time my eyes were focused on my destination. I found that my land navigation skills improved dramatically. I learned that where our eyes are focused, our feet follow. So if you are looking down at your compass, you will quickly veer off course, but if you pick a focal point in line with our intended direction of travel we will arrive at our destination.
Too often, we as Christians focus on the wrong things.
It's easy to do, I know I get wrapped up all the time in legalism, so I can't really blame Christians for focusing on sins and rules. We grow up with casual understandings of basic Bible stories and are easily caught up with this sense that our faith is about rules. But is it really? Is our faith defined by a list of things not to do? If so, we are in trouble because none of us are getting the obedience thing right.
Don't get me wrong, I believe God has very definite ideas of how we ought to live. And He gave us the law to help us to live in community with Him and with one another.
But let's be honest here, none of us came to a relationship with God through our righteousness. None of us has earned our salvation. And we didn't stop being sinners the moment we proclaimed our faith. In the book of Romans, Paul very clearly discusses his struggles with sin in his own life. But then he goes on to tell us to focus on our new life in the Spirit, telling us to focus our eyes on God and demonstrating love to one another as our spiritual act of worship.
This brings me back to my initial point of this post, this sin-centric way of thinking feels to me as if it is fixing our eyes on what we aren't supposed to do rather than on what our true focus should be.
Jesus brings us to an understanding of this in his teachings. He shows us that the laws can only provide us with the bare minimum expectation for how we are to live. When asked by the Pharisees which is the greatest commandment Jesus answers with:
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself .'"
Maybe it's time we get our minds off what we shouldn't be doing and start focusing on what we should do. What if we focused on serving others through our vocations, or finding ways to help those in need? What if we stopped trying to live our lives against certain actions we deem sinful and started living our lives FOR something instead?
What if we focused on a relationship with God instead of running scared from judgement?
My hope is that we all find a way to fix our eyes on the right focal point so we don't get lost on our way to our destination.
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