I am beginning to feel as though I have read this book before, but I realize that it is just that these are the same things that we are being taught at WRC...
"For my part I don't need any more "find yourself, feed yourself, love and forgive yourself" teaching. it's like candy - it tastes good, but it doesn't make me healthy. What I want to know is where are those who have lost their lives only to find them again? Isn't that what the Bible says to do? Shouldn't those people be our spiritual leaders?
Absurd religion has totally failed society in this area. In order to gratify itself, it has fed the public candy, until now even the Christians are sick. I think religion's current sickness is what angers and divides America. Those who don't attend church in our society know the church people are just as sick with self-absorption as everyone else is. And they get angry when a sick group of people tries to tell them what to do.
The only way any of us, religious or not, is going to get well is to be freed from absurd humanism. None of us can afford to listen to anyone, preacher or otherwise, who encourages self-fixation. The Bible takes the center off of us and puts it back on God. Compassion for people is good, but it is not the center of biblical Christianity. When religion puts people's wants, needs, hurts, cares, or anything humansitic at its center, it becomes absurd and no longer effective.
If you want to get spiritually and emotionally healthy God's way, then your spiritual center of gravity must change. We must purposely aim at what Jesus wants and cares about. We follow the pattern and attitude he had while here on earth. Jesus cared for all humanity. Yet the Bible never says humanity was the center of his life and his efforts. Jesus was focused on loving and honoring his Father in heaven. He said he would only do what his Father showed him to do. His selflessness towards God made him a servant to mankind." (My Absurd Religion by Which I Make My Living by Pastor Steve Gray)
I don't think our focus should be on "our ministry"/vision or worrying what our "calling" is. I know I have, in the past, been guilty of this. We go to churches that offer shallow sermons because it is a place where we can build on "our ministries"; all the while our children are suffering because they are being fed cotton candy fluff about God instead of a healthy meal. We wonder why our children are angry when we do all we can to give them every little thing they could possibly want, all the while they are starving for spiritual nutrition and we settle on giving them fast food continually in the name of convenience or for the purpose of finding "our calling" or building on "our ministry"/vision.
What do I think we should focus on? The same things Pastor Steve said. Are we not called to be followers of Christ? Does that not mean we aim to think like Him, do like Him, be like Him? If so, which I think most believe it to be, our focus, then, should be the same as Jesus'. "Jesus was focused on loving and honoring his Father in heaven. He said he would only do what his Father showed him to do." I don't think it is to focus on ourselves/our vision by finding or strengthening "our" calling; it is to focus on God and restoring honor to Him and listening for what He tells us to do. Everything else will fall into its place.
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