The other day, I was sitting in the kitchen, about to start eating some food. So I grab the salad that was in the refrigerator from the day before and throw some Caesar dressing on it.
Yum.
Only, at this point, my mom (who's rather sarcastic) says to me, "That's Caesar dressing with some salad." And it's true. I did put a lot of dressing on it. How else does one get rid of the taste of veggies?
Sometimes, on the rare occasion that I have some coffee, I rather enjoy it. Only, I don't know if what I'm drinking is actually considered coffee. It's more like milk and sugar with a few drops of coffee in it. So calling myself a coffee drinker would essentially be as wrong as a triangle-player calling himself a death metal rockstar.
Now all of this sounds rather silly, but, surprisingly, this is how a lot of people view their walk in Christianity. You can hear people's twisted logic in very simple statements like:
"Oh yeah man, of course I'm a Christian! I go to church!"
I'm going to rely on a classic statement to make something clear: Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than sitting in a garage makes you a car.
But, back to what I was saying. People view Jesus as something that they add to their already constructed lives. In other words, they don't have to go through the painful and immensely difficult process of transformation, they just have to believe in the basic ideas of faith and throw in a few "Amen, brother!" and "Right on, preacher!" statements. But let me put it this way:
You cannot just sprinkle some Jesus on your life.
See, we, as an organized American society, like to put things in their own boxes. We've got a box for our friends. We've got a box for our family. We've got a box for school. We've got a box for Jesus. Well, if you're going to follow this pattern of thinking, your pursuit of Jesus Christ is the box that every other box fits in.
Whenever a true transformation of the Holy Spirit happens in someone's life, (Galatians 2:20) they are a "new creation." The Scriptures claim that "The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." (2 Cor. 5:17) There is a Biblical word that is used to refer to this process of being transformed to look more and more like Christ. It is called "sanctification," and a good verse that defines it is 2 Cor. 3:18.
No where in the Bible has anyone ever been found to have "a pretty decent life" that they just added their faith to. If you are under the perception that Jesus only had to change some small things in your life when He found you, you are severely mistaken. He is the filter through which everything in our lives must pass. Christ is to have His hand in every area of our lives.
So let's stop treating the God of the universe like He's a purse dog accessory and start letting Him infiltrate every section of our lives.
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