Conditional Christianity: you can't unless...
and a light to my path." - Psalm 119:105 ESV
"pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." - 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 ESV
"You can't be a good Christian without reading the Bible and praying every day."
There's a scene from "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith", before the long and exhausting lightsaber duel, where Anakin Skywalker (or Darth Vader if you will) tells his long time mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi "If you are not with me, then you are my enemy!", to which Obi-Wan responds "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."
While I didn't ignite my lightsaber on the church patio that Sunday morning after being told by a well-meaning friend (or was it our youth pastor) that unless I read my Bible daily, and prayed daily, I could not be a good Christian, it still bothered me. And even after 40-plus years, it still does. Granted, I had grown up with those kind of "you can't do this unless you do..." statements from my parents and maternal grandmother: "finish your peas or you can't be excused from the table", or "finish your homework or no TV tonight". I can accept those because they were parental instructions, and frankly, I knew that if I didn't, a punishment would soon be enforced.
But my friend and the condition he placed on the validity of my faith had an immediate impact: I rebelled. I actively did not read the Bible, and if I did, it was made up of feeble attempts, like the two years I read the "One Year Bible", only as an act of obligation, or as an act of thinking if I did that, I'd "feel" more Christian. Prayer was something done in church, or a quick dinner blessing. That conditional statement also pushed me into going to another church, leaving the one I'd spent my awkward high school and college years at.
It took me those four decades from when that well-meaning friend said what he said that Sunday morning for me to actually start reading the Bible, not out of obligation, but out of wanting to know the Word of God as part of my walk with God. Prayer, too, was becoming more than words said before a meal, or quickly lifted-up petitions asking something of God. Now I am daily in the Word of God. I pray conversationally, as if God were sitting in the room with me. I don't simply ask for things: I bring all of me to that time of prayer. I thank Him for His blessings. I ask for and receive forgiveness as I forgive those who I feel had hurt me. I pray for my family, friends, and many who need God's healing touch. The time I carve out every morning is vital to both my spiritual health, but also to who I am and how I respond and react to and with others.
Looking back over those 40-plus years, if I were to respond to my well-meaning friend, I may have corrected him by saying "I disagree. But I cannot see how one can have a relationship with God without spending time in His Word, and conversing with Him through prayer." There is a difference in being a Christian (in its basic form), where one accepts the Gift of Grace through Jesus Christ, and having a relationship with God. And while it's taken decades to learn that, I have learned it, and am thankful to God that those words, as conditional as they may have been, finally sunk in.
Comments