I want to be a Christian but I can't.
Maybe you are right about that. Should I jus believe in Jesus and I'll be fine is that all. Do I have to follow the other rules or no?
Hey Josh, it's as though these two things are really central to this. It is important to know why you want to be Christian, but it is also important to know what being Christian means (what does it require from you, what is it for). You can understand that if you don't have the right view of the second question, then your answer to the first question might be misplaced. So I feel like I should go ahead and describe a bit to you of what being Christian is, what it requires of you, and why. Then when you take that and think about it, as the gravity (size) of the situation dawns on you, then probably you will become motivated to be Christian and nothing will stop you. But then again, we do know that some people are naturally resistant to it that they will prevent the reality from dawning on them. You don't seem to have gone too far that way though.
So you know the story is that God made a bunch of wonderful creatures in His world, some angels and some humans and some animals and plants and things, and He looked on all of this and was pleased with it. Can you imagine the sort of joy that He must have had, as He was watching the butterflies fluttering around the flowers, and the calves leaping in the grass? So something happened eh, because now we have a world where atrocities happen, where so many of His wonderful creatures that should be thrilled and loving life and praising Him for it, hate life and are eager to die, and they despise Him too. Maybe you can imagine how this is heart breaking for Him.
But you know too that some people are not content when they have enough, they always seem to want more of what they like? (That's all of us too btw, if we allow ourselves to become focused on the material life). Have you seen how this results in people taking away from others the things that they need and are naturally designed to have, that makes them content? This is because the civilisation we have established is accustomed to a concept of property ownership and the earning of it.
There's two ways to motivate people, that is by force and by desire. We have a civilisation that is motivated by force. If you want your house painted, you pay someone to do it, and they will do it. Because you have enough money to motivate them to do it, you are able to force them to do it. However, if you don't have enough money to motivate them to do it, you are not able to force them to do it. On the other hand, people often feel good about doing things as they are motivated by love. For an example of this, my friend's computer recently got hacked and she brought it around for me to fix it. I was fully pleased to do it without any expectation of money, because I know that she could not do it herself and I could see that she was suffering without it, and it only took me 2 hours to fix it. Well she didn't have to force me, because I was motivated to do it by my own willing desire. Also, a sort of a surprise is that she brought around a bag of chicken food for my chooks, because she has found it is popular among her customers and she thought my chooks might quite like it. But keep in mind, the whole world normally operates in a coercive manner, whereby people aren't motivated by what they are doing for someone else's sake, but they are only motivated if it is going to satisfy their own needs.
If you begin to look into the idea of Christianity in terms of setting up a world where life never ends, you find that this is really at the very centre of it. You can see in Matthew 25:34-36 and Matthew 25:41-43, that those who are selected for everlasting life are the very ones who care about others, who actually provide for others the things they need, that is not contingent on recompense. From this we can imagine a society in heaven where everyone actually cares about each other and is always motivated for the other's concerns. This is a supportive, nurturing, loving society where nobody should be discontent. If you look at Luke 6:30, you can see that the resurrected world will be like this. Jesus lived that way too, see Matthew 21:1-3 and Mark 14:13-15 for examples.
The vision that God had to bring this about, and that He promised to Abraham too, is that through his offspring, the world would come to know Him and worship Him. This was promised to Abraham because of his faith, which is the type of faith that is the very nature as we are describing. If you know the story of the test to sacrifice his son Isaac, you can see that Isaac was very special to Abraham, as being a 100 year old man with a 90 year old wife, and Isaac being his only son, we can easily imagine that probably there is nothing else in his life that he would want more than his own son. Yet, he did choose faithfully to forego his own desire so that he would do what God required of him.
Make sure you understand that, because it is what Christianity requires.
We do know that God sometimes requires us to forego our own desires, and that often it is difficult to do so. We can observe too, that whenever He does this, it is for a good cause. We are never expected to suffer our own desires for a no-good reason. Consider this in context of Jesus Christ's own life. Take for example His 40 day fast in the desert. He was tempted to turn stones to bread, and He was tempted to take the easy route to rule. Later on too, He was tempted by the religious leaders to perform for them, yet He chose to do what God required of Him, which we can sort of imagine was extremely costly, but probably we can not really absorb the fullness of. For some examples: He became sin so that we can live - that is to say, He allowed Himself to be tried and found guilty of blasphemy, and was executed as a criminal without defending Himself, even though He could rightfully have justified Himself and forced the world to surrender. He has allowed the world to continue in darkness for two thousand years, whereby people do the most atrocious things that I don't want to imagine. They mock and taunt God, they persecute, torture and kill the ones He loves, the ones who challenge their sinful ways. They cultivate a culture to confuse people such as yourself to follow them, whereas under ideal conditions you would be rejoicing and praising Him. This is not to mention too the personal humiliation that He has suffered as He has allowed the world to indulge in all such disbelief. So I have thought about this a bit and have been able to imagine that the temptations expressed in Matthew 16:22-23 and Matthew 26:53 are far beyond our imaginations' ability to comprehend. This all goes to emphasise why Jesus' perseverance right to the end has proven that the human can overcome sin, so that He is satisfied that we can truly be entrusted again with the tree of life, and this is why it is said about Jesus, that every knee shall bow to Him, and every tongue shall confess that He is The Lord.
So what that means for us, anyone who loves life so much that they really do want for it to never end, is that we too need to be prepared to live in such a way. We need to please God with our lives. We need to make life good for those who we share the world with, and not destroy their natural, God-given right to love life and to praise Him. In order to do this, we need to know about ourselves, the limitations of our own gratification. It is natural to have desires, because some things are simply pleasant to us. But we need to know of ourselves, the extent at which our desires begin to influence us to behave in a way that displeases God, or that makes life less pleasant for those we share the world with.
I have been considering a lot lately, the description of the seven deadly sins, which probably you are surprised I have only recently learned. Well, on the Wikipedia page, it describes how these sins have been identified as the ones that can cause a loss of "grace" and "charity". Both grace and charity are requirements of our character for others to be pleased to have us in their life. Grace is the pleasant, soft, kind, warm treatment (regard) for each other, that makes us someone who people like to know. On the other hand, someone who is not graceful is rude, harsh, unkind etc and usually makes us want to get rid of them. Charity is the one that is described in Matthew 25 as whereby if someone needs, we share. The opposite of this is to hoard. For an example of this, if we are sharing lunch with someone and they have only enough for a coffee and a cookie, and we have enough for a meal, the sin of "gluttony" might cause us to be uncharitable, where we might not share our meal with them. This in turn might cause them to "envy" us, which too is a sin, and that can cause them to be disgraceful toward us and uncharitable. Whereas on the other hand, if we are to sacrifice our own desire, we would overcome the sin of gluttony and we would be able to exercise charitably to share our meal with them. The other ones are Lust, Pride, Wrath, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Greed.
So to be a Christian is to realise that life is not all for us alone, but it is for everyone. So we are called to shift out of the status-quo of the world, which is to use every day to do as much as we can for our own pleasure. Instead what a Christian comes to realise, is that this life is temporary, it is passing away, but when the end comes, we are called to stand before God and to give an account of our life. At this time, if we are standing comfortably with Him, there can be a mutual agreement to have life forever. A Christian fixes that as their target, they learn about what God wants from them and they pay attention to the lessons He gives them in life, as they encounter situations and reflect upon the way they acted. When a Christian perceives that God is teaching them of some error in their nature, they recognise their error and accept that they must change. That is what "repentance" describes, and it is something that we can expect for the rest of our life, and probably in the one hereafter.
Jesus said that no person can serve two masters, because he will end up loving one and hating the other. This goes to describe that if there is anything that we are attached to that is causing us to commit any of those seven deadly sins, then it is contrary to what God wants, and it is therefore sin for us. But it is not to say that everyone struggles in the same way. For an example of this, take the sin of Lust. The effect of Lust is not that we aren't allowed to look at human beauty, but rather that when we commit the sin of Lust, we are actually degrading the person from being regarded in our view as someone to be honoured, to being regarded in our view as a thing to give us pleasure. What naturally causes, is a lesser amount of grace toward that person. Yet, it doesn't mean to say that we can't look at human beauty and admire it, but that we should keep our mind pure so that the sin does not cause a death of spiritual countenance.
So if you are considering to be a Christian, this is what it means: it is literally the choosing to forego your own love of life in order to give everyone else a life that they love. And this would please God. And then to go the full measure in this, to really hand over your whole life to God, is to give up everything altogether. Jesus describes it this way: "whoever gives up family and homes for my sake will be repaid a hundred times, and will have eternal life". Make sure you understand that it doesn't mean you need to instantly become a homeless vagabond preacher, but rather what it means is that you are no longer attached to anything about your life to an extent that will prevent you from cutting it loose if God one day tells you to. What it means is that you become His slave, because He has purchased you. You no longer belong to sin, but you belong to Him, and He will redeem you from the clutches of sin. A slave's master knows that a happy slave is one that serves his master well. So Jesus said "I no longer call you my slaves, but I call you my friends. Because a master does not confide in his slaves". That is the nature of the relationship between God and His people.
So perhaps Josh, what you should consider is how much you really want to live life your own way, and compare it to how much you really believe that God's vision for the whole world is right, and decide then whether you want to serve Him, or whether you want to make the most of life to be what you want it to be. It seems to me that you are quite young, and that you probably haven't been subjected to much temptation yet. I only say this because you haven't yet become committed to God and you haven't yet become hardened toward Him either. So you probably still have a good opportunity to go either way. Though what we should always discourage is having one foot in each camp, because as Jesus described about serving two masters: you will love one and hate the other. If it is God who you end up hating, then your hatred toward Him would be less if you had not sacrificed some of your own desires. The hatred a person develops toward God can actually cause them to act in ways that He resents, and He is the only someone that you can't escape, so you don't want to go that way. But having said that, the other side of the situation is that all I have described to you here is not that well understood, and you already know that lots of people out there take a negatively biased view against God that distracts people from loving Him and living the way that truly is best. So you could actually make a valuable offer to Him, that if He is to reveal to you the secrets of His promises, then you will dedicate your life to promoting this good news.
