The Way of Jesus

My youngest son Jacob and I took a quick road trip up to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to visit my middle son Jackson at college and see the band Creed perform at an amphitheater nearby.  

During our eight-hour journey, we traveled through some pretty rural parts of Oklahoma, and as we were driving along, we came upon a billboard with this message: 

"Real Christians follow Jesus teachings." 

Jacob read the sign and gave me a look that included partially rolled eyes and a grimace.  He has heard me rail on about so-called Christian billboards with unhelpful messages on many occasions, but I surprised him with my response. 

"You know," I said to him, "I don't entirely disagree with that statement."  

He looked surprised, so I went on to explain to him that even though I had some issues with the qualification of "Real Christians," I believed that anyone who calls themselves a Christian ought to adhere to Jesus' teachings. 

"The problem with Christianity," I told my son, "is that far too few of us actually read what Jesus taught, and even when we do, we pick and choose which teachings to follow and ignore the rest." 

Based on the look in his eye, I don't know how much of an impact that had on him, but at the very least, he may remember his old man teaching him something of the Christian faith that he can hold on to as he gets older. 

Emerging generations are rejecting the Church at an alarming rate. 

They have lots of credible reasons for doing so. The Church has a credibility problem with all of the various sexual abuse scandals surrounding the Catholic Church and Southern Baptists and seemingly daily news of scandals involving critical leaders in various non-denominational churches as well.  

Add to that the way the Church has historically relegated women to the pews instead of the pulpit and the rejection of LGBTQ+ people from full inclusion and acceptance, along with the Church's overall antipathy toward Science, and the reasons just keep piling up.  

Emerging generations find the literal interpretation of the Bible to be a benighted exercise that leads to prejudice, bigotry, triumphalism, and more.  They don't get how so many Christians can cling to a faith that leads them to exclude, and that, more often than not, also leads them to embrace extremist ideologies.  

Back to the billboard... 

I don't know who created and posted that billboard, but I spent enough time in evangelical Christianity to have a good idea what they were thinking.  Which is why I  find the whole message incredibly ironic.  

If your litmus test for determining whether someone is a real Christian is whether they follow Jesus' teachings, then the next logical question is, "Which teachings are you talking about?" 

Because here are some of the teachings that I read that are difficult to follow but necessary: 

If you want to find your life, you need to lose it.
You cannot serve both God, and money.
Love and pray for your enemies. 
If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek.
Deny yourself and learn from suffering. 

Be a peacemaker if you want to be blessed. 

Seek God's shalom or peace on earth before anything else. 

Reach out to the outcasts and people on the margins. 

Put the needs of others ahead of your own. 

There's so much more, but I'll leave it at that.  I feel like the lessons Jesus taught with his life are also ones that "real" Christians should follow.  He showed radical acceptance, practiced radical forgiveness, and spoke against violence, materialism, religiosity, hypocrisy, and the like. 

The late Buddhist author and teacher Thich Nhat Hahn once wrote this: 

“When Jesus said, "I am the way," He meant that to have a true relationship with God, you must practice His way.”

Listen, when a Buddhist teacher can encapsulate what it means to be a follower of Jesus more fully than most Christians, including (I imagine) the ones putting up billboards about following Jesus, Christianity has some work to do. 

But it really does come down to what Hahn wrote. You have to actually practice what you are preaching if you want to follow Christ's path toward a true relationship with God.  

For my part, I hope my son hears and sees that lesson from me, even though I'm often a flawed vessel for sharing it. 

May we all do our part to keep stumbling after Jesus and embrace the way of Jesus.  And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all, now and forever. Amen.