so it's easter
it's been awhile since I've written... as per usual
I've been thinking a lot about my standards and the way I choose to live lately. It's been crazy and hard all at once; I mean, suddenly I find myself away from all the influences I'm so used to - in a familiar and yet new place all at once. Now I find myself wondering why I choose to live the way I do in a world where it could seem so very unneccessary and even foreign.
Why does it matter?
The word 'religious' has always bothered me. Today I was thinking through why - especially in light of it being easter this sunday. I always view religious people as those who inflict all sorts of difficult and awkward rules on themselves for no apparant reason except that it makes them somehow better than everyone else. I don't want to be that.
I don't want to have different standards and morals just because it makes me 'religious'... and I never want to be strange and intangible to the people around me. I would hope that folks see me and want to be around me because something about me excites and draws them.
That's not religion. Religion turns me off and pushes me away. it stinks of coming hypocrisy. Shoot. Now this is all symantics isn't it? It's how I connotate the word, not necessarily it's dictionary meaning. But I can't help how I feel when I hear the word.
So Easter is kind of exciting for me because it brings a kind of freedom- religion is what the world had before Christ... it was our only option... trying to live a set of rules that would make us perfect even though our very nature is to put ourselves first, thus hurting others and making us imperfect. Because a truely perfect human lived, died, and was raised to life by the power of God - being punished for a sin he didn't commit - I now can have grace in my life. A hope and a reason to live. Is that not worth protecting?
And so that's why I choose to live the way I live. Religiously working to clean out the self-loving nature that causes me to hurt others so that I can love more purely. Impossible.
But then the impossible is an easy thing. A finished work in the eyes of God. Glad to know I'm not alone.
I've been thinking a lot about my standards and the way I choose to live lately. It's been crazy and hard all at once; I mean, suddenly I find myself away from all the influences I'm so used to - in a familiar and yet new place all at once. Now I find myself wondering why I choose to live the way I do in a world where it could seem so very unneccessary and even foreign.
Why does it matter?
The word 'religious' has always bothered me. Today I was thinking through why - especially in light of it being easter this sunday. I always view religious people as those who inflict all sorts of difficult and awkward rules on themselves for no apparant reason except that it makes them somehow better than everyone else. I don't want to be that.
I don't want to have different standards and morals just because it makes me 'religious'... and I never want to be strange and intangible to the people around me. I would hope that folks see me and want to be around me because something about me excites and draws them.
That's not religion. Religion turns me off and pushes me away. it stinks of coming hypocrisy. Shoot. Now this is all symantics isn't it? It's how I connotate the word, not necessarily it's dictionary meaning. But I can't help how I feel when I hear the word.
So Easter is kind of exciting for me because it brings a kind of freedom- religion is what the world had before Christ... it was our only option... trying to live a set of rules that would make us perfect even though our very nature is to put ourselves first, thus hurting others and making us imperfect. Because a truely perfect human lived, died, and was raised to life by the power of God - being punished for a sin he didn't commit - I now can have grace in my life. A hope and a reason to live. Is that not worth protecting?
And so that's why I choose to live the way I live. Religiously working to clean out the self-loving nature that causes me to hurt others so that I can love more purely. Impossible.
But then the impossible is an easy thing. A finished work in the eyes of God. Glad to know I'm not alone.
posted by kukkiriza at 3:15 PM
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