Fake Obedience?

 

I’ve discovered something that surprised me recently. It turns out that, for most Christians, the hardest thing isn’t loving their enemies or serving the poor, it’s obeying Jesus’ command to love their own brothers and sisters in Christ.

 

Over the last few weeks I’ve witnessed this phenomenon first hand, and it really disappoints me. What I mean is that when another Christian hurts our feelings, or even just disagrees with us about something, most find it easier to just walk away from that person, or even an entire church community, rather than go to that person and try to work things out.

 

Of course, the question for us shouldn’t be “which is easier”, it should be, “what does Jesus expect of me?”

 

So, instead of telling one another the truth about how we feel, or what we believe, we’d rather just pretend to have unity and fake our faith in the teachings of Christ.

 

Jesus wants us to actually put His teachings into practice. He expects us to leave our sacrifice at the proverbial altar and make things right with one another rather than go through the motions.

 

If we decide to ignore Jesus, it doesn’t solve anything. It only makes things worse. We carry around our hurt when we show up at the next church fellowship we enter. We begin to mistrust other Christians because we bear a constant reminder of how much it hurts to experience deeper fellowship. We get to be pretty good at faking our emotions, even faking the fruit of the spirit - joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control - rather than actually obey Jesus and allow His Spirit to create these within us for real.

 

Maybe this is why Jesus commands us to love one another? Maybe it’s why Jesus expects us to make things right between our brothers and sisters? So that those boulders of unforgiveness that are holding back the flood of His Spirit can be removed and we can start to actually live the Christian life and experience the indwelling life of Christ within.

 

Here’s what I do know: I know that Jesus isn’t glorified when we fake unity. I know that God doesn’t want His children to pretend they are obedient. Pretend obedience is more correctly called “disobedience” and nothing good can come from this.

 

I know that Jesus commands us to love one another, and I know that love includes forgiveness and reconciliation.

 

If you’re pretending that everything is ok, and you know deep in your heart that it really is not ok, then you need to go and make it right. You need to obey Jesus and make peace. You need to make reconciliation a priority. You need to stop pretending to love people, and start actually loving people. You need to stop faking unity with your brothers and sisters, and start living in actual unity.

 

Because who wants to pretend to follow Jesus? Who wants to fake their faith? Who wants to go through the motions?

 

Hopefully, none of us.

-kg