"No matter what the issue is, we as humans prefer rules, regulations, laws and checklists to Jesus himself. Rather than asking the Spirit what the real issue is inside [someone's] heart, we simply want them to externally modify their behavior." --http://www.believe.com/articles/The-Idolatry-of-Modesty/It's been said (maybe too many times) that Christianity is "not a religion; it's a relationship." I have struggled with that phrase a lot, because I don't know exactly how honest it is. The sentiment is true, I think; as a Christian, I should be less concerned with rules and the letter of the law than I should be with being proactive about my relationship with Jesus. Still, that's not to say that there isn't a place for rules, and it would be misleading to not call the Christianity of Bible-Believing Evangelical Christians a "religion." It's not like we're a bunch of disconnected mystics that have magically all arrived at the same conclusions about most things that are fundamentally important.
But there's probably more truth in the phrase that I'm comfortable with. Honestly, the thought of needing to be be "in step with the Spirit" (Galatians 5) is just a bit frightening to me. I'm not sure why that is, exactly, but something about it makes me uneasy. It's heavy and weighty, dreadfully serious. It means that the important thing is not what I do. The important thing is where my heart is, my own willingness to follow the Spirit moment by moment. The important thing is willful obedience.
The truth is that I am an incredibly obstinate person. Part of that is undoubtedly growing up in the instant-gratification generation I was born into, some of it is the exposure I've had to my family, who are for the most part just as stubborn as I am, and part of it is probably the fact that I hate not being in control. I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it, and I get frustrated frustrated when I can't. So when Paul says, "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh," I start to get uneasy, because that means that I can't just do whatever the heck I want whenever I want to. It means I have to defer to someone else.
Now, speaking in generalities, I'm alright with that. I don't really have a problem with saying that Jesus is Lord of my life and making the big decisions in light of that. Where it gets sticky is in the little moment-to-moment things. I think that's mostly because I always like to have a plan, and I get a little panicky when things don't follow the plan, and following the Spirit in the moment sometimes means going in a direction that is different from the plan. (Again, I like to be in control.)
To illustrate: Since I've been back home, I've been working as a substitute teacher. I had a long term gig this last few months, which was hard in that I was essentially a first-year teacher for four months, but it was great in that it was consistent. I knew what to expect. That gig ended a little over a week ago, and tomorrow I will probably be woken up with a phone call asking if I can come in to sub. I am not happy about this. This means that I will go to bed tonight not knowing whether or not I am working tomorrow. I won't know where I'm working, or in what subject, or with what age group. All of this not-knowing makes me want to not do anything, and chances are that because I'll be sleeping and I won't want to change plans quickly, I won't even go in to teach in the morning. If this keeps up I'll get depressed, and then I'll never want to do anything, and I'll probably default on my loans and become a homeless man that lives under a bridge, or maybe that guy that never moves out of his parents' house and gets pale and socially awkward because all he does is look at a computer screen all day and pretend he has friends. All because I'm stubborn and didn't want to do something without having a plan to do it.
See, here is the big-picture plan for the life of Jacob the Christian: Jacob the Christian is a sinner, Jesus dies for Jacob the Christian, Jacob the Christian accepts grace that he can't earn, and Jacob the Christian is justified, his sins are forgiven, and he lives his life for Jesus. I like this plan. It definitely works out in my favor, and even though it requires massive commitment and re-alignment of priorities, I'm cool with it. But here's the super-close-up plan for Jacob the Christian: Jacob the Christian wants to do something that probably isn't kosher, Holy Spirit says to Jacob the Christian that he should not do that but should instead follow Holy Spirit's prompting, and Jacob the Christian does. This plan I don't like so much. This plan requires that I change my plan and not get what I want to get, and Jacob the Corporeal Being doesn't like that because Jacob the Corporeal Being is very stubborn.
So back to the religion vs. relationship thing. If everything were just about rules, I'd be alright. When you break a rule, you can pay the penalty and fix it. If I want to skip a college class, I probably can, because I probably have a set amount of classes I can skip without penalty, and if I'm doing well enough in class I can get away with it even if it does hurt my grade. If I park where I'm not supposed to, I pay my parking ticket and everything is back to normal. I know that all my sin is paid via Jesus' death on the cross, so I'm all good there. The thing is, relationships don't really work that way. If my friend wants to talk because they had a bad day and I am stubborn and selfish and click through facebook instead (purely hypothetical, of course), I can't just go back and pay them $20 and get it taken care of. That offense is going to stay on my record, and it's probably going to come back and haunt me in some way, even if my friend is really awesome about it. Not that I have done that, of course.
God isn't quite so penal as to constantly remind us of our wrongdoing by way of punishment, I don't think. Love keeps no record of wrongs, and there's a great amount of truth to the macro-"God-forgives-all-sins-when-we-put-our-faith-in-him" story. But there is something to the relational side of Christianity, as well. I can't in good conscience do what I know the Spirit is telling me not to do (or vice-versa) because I know it will be "taken care of" by Jesus' death. In a legal sense it will, but there is something deeper going on, something relational, and when I look the other way and follow my plan instead, I in some way make things worse. It's hard for me to articulate what that really looks like, just as it would be in the case of the friend that I ignore, but something there is being damaged in some way. To walk "in step with the Spirit" is to acknowledge that relationship, to acknowledge God's sovereignty over my life in every moment, and it requires a great humility and great commitment to this God/man relationship. It requires that I be flexible and willing to alter my plans in favor of something that is better (according to someone that is not me). That, for me, is really hard.
The quote at the beginning is from an article on modest dress becoming a sort of idol, and I think it gets to the heart of this issue. What I do is not really what's important. Where my heart is, where my loyalties lie, is far more significant, and, probably not coincidentally, much harder to deal with. There's no faking it or correcting it in the future. My heart, my attitude towards the Spirit's guidance in my life, is only really relevant in the moment. In that moment, I decide whether or not to walk in the Spirit.
Turns out God is pretty concerned with the heart. Paul knew that, and so his advice to the Galatians who were preoccupied with the law was to forget about it and instead focus on having a heart that was willing to listen to the Spirit. Galatians 5 starts out saying "Do not submit again to the yoke of slavery," but the slavery wasn't to sin; it was to the law. The Galatians would rather have had a set of rules to follow than have to do the hard work of preparing their hearts and submitting to the Spirit moment by moment. Sounds familiar.
The take-away? Ouch. I have a long way to go. I have built up such a resistance to the Spirit in my life that it will take tremendous effort to do what he tells me to do. But the way of the Christian is not one of rules and law and legalism. It's a way where we walk by faith, not by sight, by the guidance of the Spirit--and by constant humility. What a difficult thing to do well. God has had much grace on me thus far, and I only pray he will continue to do so as I stumble through.
