This past week, I found myself thinking about my Christian walk in a new way. I have lived a life saturated with church culture and leadership philosophy - so much, in fact, that I am frankly sick of it. Like many believers, I have arrived at the conclusion that in order to honestly and faithfully pursue Christ, I have to reject much of what I have been taught and relearn my disciplines of faith.

I spoke to a young woman who called me today and spoke to me about the pain she had been caused by people in her life professing to be Christians. We talked at length about her experiences and how it made her realize that Christiandom does not necessarily make people better. Sometimes, it masks the real problems within a person behind doctrines, faith statements, self-mercy, and blatant lies. But, after talking with her, I began thinking of how many people I know like that - Christian and non-believer - all trapped in whatever makes them sleep better at the end of the day no matter who they hurt. Ultimately, our religions become sedatives, tranquilizers, and pain killers helpful only to dull pain and tuck it far into a place it can no longer harm us.

I also spent some time thinking of the people in my life who are not believers, and have voiced that they never will be. These are people who have seen such bad witnesses that they can no longer believe in the One supposedly witnessesed for. These people are disillusioned and cold towards the idea of growing closer to God simply because they cannot find anyone who is qualified to help them and even less people who are doing it without hidden motives.

This does not sound like the Church Jesus started. It sounds like a sad, hopeless state of nothingness. And, I see it every day in the many ministries I deal with on a regular basis. They are pursuing everything life has to offer - ministry success, speaking engagements, ideological supremacy, and more money to do "bigger" things. It's all the same, yet they all say it is different then the next guy. Evangelism is cheapened since it now only serves to make institutional members, not true converts or disciples.

This is not the Way of Jesus. These are the Ways of Man. So, is there hope? Are there answers beyond this massive swirl of lies, hypocrisy, and bitterness? Are we just to throw our arms up in the air and give up? Do we just give in and sit quietly in the pews? Do we sit around in our house churches and complain about the situation?

I believe we must move into the solution - each of us individually. We must begin living out the Way of Jesus.

The Good News

The Good News, or the "Gospel", is what hundreds of thousands of churches around the world claim to preach. But, do we know the REAL Gospel? Many believe that it is the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ - the fact that we can now go to Heaven through the sacrifice of Jesus. Churches teach that before Christ, no man could be righteous, and so the Good News was that we could now be righteous. This thought completely ignores the true teachings of the Old Testament. Noah was found righteous in Genesis 7:1. Job was found righteous in Job 1:1. Throughout the Old Testament, you see references to "the righteous". Indeed, there were ways that men could be righteous by shunning evil, doing good, and loving God with everything.

So, what is the Good News Jesus was referring to? Let's read His own words: "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me; because of this He has anointed Me to proclaim the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives, and new sight to the blind, to set at liberty those having been crushed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."

Notice that Jesus was called to those who were in need of a hero. It's good - even GREAT - news that He had arrived! You see, the process of becoming righteous had been made so complicated by the "Church" of the time - the theological bullies - that Jesus had to come to set the record straight. He came to bring it back to simplicity, set us free from man-made systems, and ultimately become our final sacrifices. This "Good News" spread like wildfire and created communities of faith so strong that centuries of persecution could not stop it. Once the people had been freed, they were free indeed.

Walking the Path

Jesus did not command the first 12 apostles to create believers of a religion or members of an organization. He commanded them to create disciples. It is important to understand what that means. A disciple is someone who studies a particular way of doing something from another person until they know everything that person knows. Yet, Jesus told the disciples clearly in Matthew 23 that none of them should be called Rabbi, Father, or Teacher. Who were these new disciples to follow? What was the real mission that Jesus put the apostles on?

This is an easy answer. Jesus taught the 12 original apostles everything they needed to pass on. The apostles were to simply pass it on to others and duplicate themselves as disciples of Christ, not themselves. Jesus said in John 14 that he would send the Holy Spirit to take His place as the Teacher of His Church.

Blazing the trail that Christ cut for us requires us to simply learn what the disciples learned and live it out, taking time to duplicate ourselves whenever possible and helping others to become disciples, too. That is done by a simple process: learn it, live it, pass it on. You cannot pass on what you do not live. You cannot live what you have not learned. You cannot learn until you realize you know nothing. You don't come to that realization until you come to the end of yourself. Enter Christ.

The Straight and Narrow Road

Jesus and His disciples spent their time executing on the Gospel. They spent their lives settings others free, while freeing themselves of their own issues. Peter spent his entire time with Christ dealing with Himself. When Jesus ascended, it was Peter who headed the efforts in Jerusalem to spread the Good News. Paul was set free of himself on his way to Damascus. He spent the rest of his life setting others free - Jew and Gentile. They were like Neo setting people free of the Matrix - minus the long leather jackets.

Today we are too distracted with either living the contemporary church life or fighting its cultural influences. That life has nothing to do with the Gospel, and the Gospel was against everything our institutional structures stand for. You can't hide that behind a good cause. There are many non-Christian organizations that do great things. It does not mean that God has ordained them with any special rights and privileges. The straight and narrow road of Christ is curiously quiet about organized Church. Jesus only mentions the word twice, and neither time does He define or attempt to organize it. His church does not have walls, projection screens, or fancy worship teams. It is a people following a path towards loving God and loving other people more each day.

How are we growing in those things each day? How are we encountering truth and living out its principles? How are we maintaining our friendships? How are we showing OUR love, not just the "love of Christ"? The bottom line is that the way of Christ is much more than we talk about and much more than any of us truly live. But, its simplicity is beyond any other path, and its destination is beyond anything we can ever imagine. The answers are there - you just have to walk the path of the red letters.