At church this morning, the sermon was about what holds some people
back from making a commitment to Christ. The pastor mentioned
Augustine, but he quoted Augustine as saying that he wanted to make a
commitment to Christ, but not quite yet. Actually, if I'm not mistaken,
the story is actually that Augustine prayed at some point that God
might make him chaste, but not quite yet! The pastor may have been
trying to be discreet. At the same time, the pastor did say that
Augustine was reluctant to commit to Christ because Augustine wanted to
continue to enjoy certain pleasures!
According
to the pastor, a reason that some people are hesitant to commit to
Christ is that they want to hold on to their individuality. The thing
is, the pastor continued, the way that they can truly find themselves is
by committing to Christ.
I'm not entirely sure what people
have in mind when they talk about being committed to Christ. Does that
entail things that Christians do----prayer, Bible reading, doing acts of
service, trying not to hurt others, being a kind and gentle person,
telling others about Jesus, etc.? The pastor was talking about the
importance of feeding on Christ himself----there is a banquet, the
pastor told us, and Jesus is the meal!
I've talked before
about my struggles with Christianity. I find some of its standards to
be unrealistically high----don't lust, forgive, love other Christians
just as Jesus loves you, etc. And, the thing is, many of the
Christians who would get on their high horse and judge me over saying
this have themselves not reached the high standards of Christianity.
I'll give some credit to those who fight nobly against lust, for not
every Christian male is the type who visits porn on the Internet on a
regular basis (although there are Christian males who struggle with
this, and some who don't struggle but just visit the porn sites). But
do they forgive, or do they redefine forgiveness to mean that you put
out of yourself bitterness against another person, without necessarily
having to become friends with that person? Do they truly love each and
every believer as Christ loves them, or do they love those who are their
friends, while merely being polite (if they're even that) to those who
are outside of their clique? I don't fault them for this. I
myself don't feel compelled to be friends with everyone, and I admit
that I don't love each and every Christian the way that Christ loves
me. But I don't thump my chest about the authority of Scripture, as do
those who do this while bringing down the high standards of Scripture to
a more attainable level.
Regarding individuality,
granted, there are plenty of times when I feel that being a Christian
can compromise a person's individuality. My impression is that people
become evangelicals and in essence are made into clones that are
happy-happy and believe the same thing. Maybe there's something
to my impression, and yet I doubt that's the full deal, for behind each
happy-happy evangelical is a person with his or her unique story, and
his or her own reasons for coming to faith. Can I become more of an individual by being a Christian? As I said in my reflections here, there is a sense that I could be who I truly am if I forsook such things as bitterness, pettiness, etc., etc. I
think that, somewhere within each person, there is a desire to love and
to be loved, and there are things that stand in the way of that taking
place.