What if following Jesus isn’t primarily about belief or actions?
As Christians we usually say that our faith is about believing the right things and also about doing the right things (whatever they are) Christian Piatt’s point is that being a Christian, following Jesus, is not about doing the right things, its not even about believing the right things/ It’s not…
“….about making the right statement of faith before a cloud of witnesses. It’s not about staying out of hell, and it’s not about making sure your sin tab is paid up in case the Son pops in for a surprise inspection”.
It’s actually about our walk with Christ. It’s about having the right heart, it’s about being “right-hearted”. He continues:
“Consider the Greatest Commandment ( …love the Lord your God with all your heart, strength and mind and love your neighbour as yourself….) By focusing on Loving God with all we are, loving all of our neighbors (all really does mean ALL), and even loving ourselves in kind, everything else falls into its proper place. He doesn’t say that the Greatest Commandment is to claim a certain set of beliefs, get baptized or go to a certain church. …..But at the same time, he’s not diminishing or undermining these. Rather, he’s helping bring them into greater fullness (perfection) by focusing first and foremost on loving. Not just love as a claim or feeling, but as a verb, a worldview”.
This is at the heart of Christian Piatt’s My Jesus Project, trying to understand more deeply and more personally what it means to follow Jesus.
I’m following his project and I’m interested to know how we can become more “right hearted”, and assuming we do become right-hearted, how does one expresses right-heartedness without falling back into words about what we have to believe or what we have to do.
I like the talk on Christian anarchism on the MyJesusProject blog. Maybe following Jesus is about being radical. I worry that when we talk about being right-hearted the focus becomes about us as individuals and our personal relationship with Jesus instead of our relationship in community. What does community right-heartedness look like? Is it whole communities of Christians being willing to give up their individual desires for the good of the whole? Might it be accepting big tax increases so that austerity measures against the poor and marginalised don’t neeed to happen?
I agree with a lot of that Jane — right heartedness in community — but I think that has to start with having our hearts right as individuals. I also listened to the “Christian Anarchy” video that you say you liked even though I don’t possess the beard and glasses. I found more to disagree with than agree there. I left some comments inc.…I agree that there is a common “spirit of meanness” in the world and many human institutions have failed for most people. But why do people think that a socialist extreme would necessarily be any better? I… Read more »
Many times a day we have to make decisions based on incomplete or even conflicting knowledge. Often outcomes do not align with our expectations. The greatest compliment our lack of insight can be excused by is that “… but his heart was in the right place …”. A loving God understands, even expects, our fallibility and forgives us if our heart is in the right place.
I think I would agree as long as we are not using our fallibility as an excuse and saying …“but my heart was well intentioned”. I also think that having the right heart means we can admit our mistakes and learn. thanks Dave for commenting — appreciate that