HOW IMPORTANT IS IT TO BE RIGHT?

 

Is Christianity ultimately about being right? Or is it about following Jesus?

See, if Christianity is about being right then it's easier to justify cutting off those people you don't agree with. Because, if you see Christianity as a quest for “rightness” then being wrong is the greatest sin of all.

However, if you see Christianity as following Jesus, then being right is less important than the quality of your relationship with Him.

Relationships are messy. They’re not about correctness, or accuracy. No one measures their relationships in such terms. Instead, we gauge the health of our relationships based on how open our communication is, and how honest we can be with one another, and how much time we spend together.

Jesus also connects our obedience to His commands with our love for Him. It’s all through the Gospel of John, especially in John 14.

He also equates our love for Him with how we love one another. If we love one another as He has loved us – which is one of His commands – then we are loving Him by our obedience, and by being obedient we are loving others, too.

Elsewhere, Jesus connects our horizontal relationships with our vertical one towards God. He tells us that we should go and reconcile with our brother before we return to complete our acts of worship. And the Apostle John pushes it further by saying that if we claim to love God but don’t love our brothers and sisters, we’re just liars.

So, what should we learn from this? Perhaps that our interpersonal relationships don’t need to hinge on agreement with one another.

I can love someone who has the wrong ideas about doctrine. I can fellowship with a brother who sees things differently than I do. I can extend grace to a sister who calls me a heretic.

Are they wrong? Maybe. But perhaps I’m the one who is off base? Until we know for sure, our main goal should be to love one another as Christ has loved us.

In the early church, for example, there were three different views of the doctrine of hell. For nearly 300 years none of those people considered the others to be "heretics" or worthy of excommunication or disqualified from the faith.

It was only after Constantine shifted the paradigm of Christianity from a focus on Christlikeness [orthopraxy] to one of Correctness [orthodoxy] that Christians started persecuting one another over differences of opinion in matters of faith.

So, nowhere do we get the idea that the Gospel is about having the correct information. Instead, it’s about having a transformational relationship with Jesus.

This relationship involves abiding in Christ as He abides in us. Through this process, our sinful self is daily crucified and our spiritual self – the “new creature” – is brought to life within us.

It’s a constant exchange of death for life where the resurrection power of Christ is increasingly revealed in us and transforming us into people who are like Him.

So, in summary, if the Gospel is about having the right information, then being right is everything.

But, if the Gospel is about transformation, then being Christlike is everything.

Let go of the need to “be right” and begin to embrace the reality of Christ’s transformational life in you!

We’re all in process. None of us is right about everything. Thankfully, we don’t need to be.

We just have to keep abiding in Him.

Peace,

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