I recently got a new look at myself, at my normal enviroment and at my faith community's norms - and suddenly - things I thought were so good, so positive, so right...all of a sudden looked odd, out of place, not nearly as productive and not nearly as helpful as I had always perceived. I stepped away from the perfect life I was living and removed myself from the normal church-going activities (while still keeping up and even digging deeper into my relationship with God) and I saw something...different.
What has become the usual Christian lifestyle in the past couple of decades, I believe can be blinding to some basic truths. And when we're only around others who think the same as us, when we're only around other Christians, we don't get true perspective on our actions and thoughts and pursuits.
When we are only around like-minded people, we become narrow-minded.
We can get so focused on our passions as Christians and on our norms as church members that we misguide ourselves into believing that intense spirituality is what the world needs and what God wants from us. But step back, get out of the norms, get away from the usuals...and you might find that what seemed so right, now seems...too much.
I think as Christians we can become overly-religious...too spiritually-minded.
If I just read this statement a couple years back, the very statement would've sounded like blashphamy to me. I would've attributed "spiritually-minded" to "thinking like Jesus" and thought, "Too Christ-minded? Never!" in reaction to the statement. And that was exactly my problem. In good intention to promote God, I had become too pious about my faith.
Look, even the Bible talks negatively about being overly-righteous!
"There is a just man who perishes in his righteousness."
Ecc. 7:15
The verse still credits the man to being just. In other words, its acknowledging the right intentions in the person. I believe when we are too spiritual it's not because we're trying to be stupid or religious or legalistic or etc. We very, very much want to serve God and put Him first in our lives!! We really are only trying to live for God!! And I understand this. I was there. I'm still learning to not be overly-righteous.
We can be very well-intented and still be wrong though. Read on:
"Do not be overly righteous,
Nor be overly wise:Why destroy yourself?"Ecc. 7:16
These verses make very definite and strong statements:
- We definitely can be too spiritually-minded, too righteous.
- Being this way is extremely negative...to the point of perishing in it, to the point of destroying oneself with it!!!
I think that's exactly what we do. We get so narrow-minded in our great intentions for God that we think being overly spiritual is how we need to overcome this world and what the world needs to see. But this very thing actually repels non-Christians from us. This very thing actually just makes us completely unaware and unable to relate to the world around us. So we perish in our own good intentions.
We defeat our own pursuits before we even begin pursuing them.
Over the past few decades we've created a Christian culture that has elevated the lifestyle of overly-spiritual as the most Godly. We've created a culture that pushes the ideas that if it's not "the very best way," if we're not being intensely perfect, if we're not thinking spiritually about all things - then we not as Christ-like as others.
But who are we really promoting likeness to? The Pharisees or Jesus?
The Pharisees were intensely righteous. Everything about them showed they were spiritually-minded in all things. They studied the law of God and held everyone to it. They were examples of perfection according to this law. Everyone around them understood this and held them in high standing for this. Everyone understood that they needed to be more like them. But everyone around them also hated them, thought they were holding standards too high to live up, saw them as hypocrites because they knew that they secretly weren't all living up to their own standards either.
Today as Christians we definitely see the negative sides to the Pharisees and don't want to be them. But put yourself in their time period. The Pharisees weren't as evil and obviously wrong as we make them out to be: They were also just church-members who were trying to please God. They were also just students of theology who deeply wanted to live for God and promote God's way in the world. They were trying to do what's right. They dedicated all their efforts and all their lives to the church. They gave their money and their time to the church. They were trying to uphold God's standard for living to keep God's people from being infiltrated with sin and evil. They were trying to be holy and promote holiness to people around them.
Now don't they sound a little more like us at church than just the obviously out-of-touch people?! If I had to be honest with myself, I've definitely looked more like a Pharisee than I've looked like Jesus, however well-intended I was trying to be. The very things I was doing to try be like Christ actually looked more like a Pharisee in its execution.
Let's look at Jesus in comparison: His feet were on the ground as opposed to being super-spiritual. He didn't try to spend all his time at the temple, and he didn't try hang out with ONLY other spiritually-minded people. He loved all people. Intensely! He led people to Himself with a friend-like attitude where He walked with them, ate at their houses, lived among them, felt their pain and enjoyed them. Jesus was willing to be seen as a heretic by the religious people of His day if that's what it took to truly love and show God to people. Jesus took the religious ideas of the day and broke them to relieve the heavy religious burden that people were suffering under.
Being like Jesus requires that we get rid of all our engrained overly-righteous perspectives and approaches to life. If we want the world to be infiltrated with Jesus, it needs to start with a reformation in US. The world will never see Jesus if we're not showing Him, if we're hiding Him behind our overly-spiritual actions, words and habits.
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