When I was in high school, our Baptist church had a speaker,
Pastor Waltrop I believe his name was, came to speak to us during a
revival. In the South, we’d every once
in awhile have what is called a revival –a week of services to help revive and
renew our faith. I will never forget
that night because that was when I began to question my faith –my faith had
been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and it was on the critical list. Pastor Waltrop preached to us about how
Proctor& Gamble, the soap company, was run by the Devil’s minions. He explained to us that the music group
Queen (and others) recorded secret messages on LP records praising Satan (this
was before digital CDs and you had to play the records backwards). He preached against Rock and Roll and
everything in the world that he thought had an agenda to turn you away from
Jesus. The church was packed. I sat there thinking what does this really
have to do with Jesus. I looked around
and saw folks that hadn’t been to church in ages and thought that they weren’t
getting the real story about what Jesus wants us to do. Even in high school, I thought Pastor
Waltrop had his own agenda, and that agenda involved following Pastor Waltrop
and not Jesus. It wasn’t long after that
I un-Baptisted myself and began to follow Jesus differently.
Every day I see another social
media post by someone professing to be a Christian telling others what God or
Jesus wants. Many advocate things I just can’t see relating to anything Jesus
ever wanted. As Susan B. Anthony said, “I
distrust those people who
know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides
with their own desires”. It started me thinking again about
what being a Christian really meant and ultimately what we were supposed to do
in our relationships with other people.
The simplest answer is that a Christian follows the
teachings of Christ –we aren’t Old Testamentarians or New Testamentarians or
Paulians or Augustinians or any other variation of document or early
Christian father. Our ultimate allegiance is with Christ, everything else is a
supporting or bit player and whenever they travel beyond the teachings of
Jesus, in my opinion, they become null and void.
Most of my adult life has been asking this question: “What
was the essence of what Jesus was teaching us?”. What did Jesus focus on in his teachings? Huston Smith, author of
The World’s Religions, said most succinctly that “everything that came
from [Jesus’] lips…focus[ed] human awareness on the two most important facts
about life: God’s overwhelming love for humanity, and the need for people to
accept that love and let it flow through them to others.” That quote summed it
up for me. I later came across eight points
in the book entitled The World’s Wisdom. I call them The Eight Jesus Rules. I hate to call them “rules”.
It sounds like draconian demands when I use that word. I always hear my
mind saying “Rules are meant to be broken.” –that’s from my arts education in
college. The rebel in me hates rules. I had thought about calling them
“commandments”, but there are already ten of those people don’t follow. The rebel in me hates rules and commands,
but I think I could follow these rules pretty easily.
Jesus Christ’s teachings can be summarized into eight points
(The Eight Jesus Rules):
1) Love one another.
2) Turn the other cheek.
3) Love your enemies.
4) The Golden Rule (In everything do to others as you would have them do to you.)
5) I was hungry and you gave me food.
6) Before all else, be reconciled (be at peace with others i.e. settle your quarrels with people).
7) Forgive seventy-seven times.
8) Let the sinless cast the first stone.
It’s really that simple.
NOTE: These eight points could serve as a litmus test for
any post or person telling you what Jesus would or would not approve. A senator
saying that cutting food benefits for the poor is a Christian thing (NO, see
numbers 1, 4, and 5). A pastor calling for intolerance and hate (NO, numbers 1,
4, 6, and 9) A Christian demanding violence for something he doesn’t like (NO,
numbers 1,2,3,4…you get the picture). Use that list, hang it near your
computer, and, as Jesus also said, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you
in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by
their fruits.”
