Do Versus Don’t

December 14, 2007 by David.

Lessons learned are often un-learned. It’s in our nature to forget the things that go against what we’re comfortable with.

So it goes with Christianity. You’d think that we would learn our lessons - you know, remember the teachings of Christ. And yet, 2000 years later, it seems that the past 2000 years are loaded with stories of forgetting those lessons. Even the earliest Christians forgot the important lessons.

What am I blabbering about? Do versus don’t. We still argue over this, but Christ laid out what should drive our lives in the simplest of terms. The pharisees lived life believing that righteousness was about what you didn’t do. Don’t cuss, don’t drink, don’t smoke. That kind of stuff.

Jesus flipped that philosophy on it’s head. He insisted that righteousness had less to do with what you didn’t do and more to do with what you did. In fact, he took the “don’t do that” philosophy and trampled it. So, you say that righteousness means not having an affair? Well, if you so much as THINK about it, it is as if you’re having the affair. What Jesus did here was simple - he told all those who listened that simply upholding the law did not absolve your heart.

But here’s the beauty - Christ laid out a simple plan for righteousness and it was based not on avoidance of sin, but actions of love. “If you love me, feed my sheep.” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s so simple, so powerful, yet so against our nature. For some reason, we want to believe that drawing closer to God happens through obeying a series of laws. The thought that in order to draw closer to God, we must draw closer to one another - LOVE one another - is frightening. It is easier to judge the poor than it is to clothe and feed them. It’s easier to mock the homeless man than to provide him warm clothing and shelter. It’s easier to discuss why people live in poverty than it is to visit them in it.

As Christians, Christ should be our standard at all times. Look at his life - he spent his time with the poor and the desolate. He fed the hungry and brought healing to the sick. He gave hope to the hopeless. He loved endlessly, without regard to “avoiding sin.” The great truth in this, though, is that by living a life of righteousness in action, he ended up showing us how it automatically leads us to “avoid sin.”

As with all things, though, making this a standard part of my life is a difficulty that makes me relate to the example set for the past 2000 years.

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