Saturday, July 09, 2005

# 15: Distractions and Other Thoughts

Life is great when a person is living just to die for a great and noble cause. When a group of people are not Christians, the ethics of “an eye for an eye” should be applied. Grace only applies when Christ truly is one’s leader, which is confirmed not by what one says but by how one lives. When grace is practiced without Christ, the result is debauchery. That is, when unbelievers are forgiven for deliberate and premeditated wrongdoing, grace is made into an old Santa Claus. With those thoughts in mind, anyone can see why the legal and penal systems in America are in shambles.

Christianity is not so much a religion, but a way of life in which God is worshiped apart from the physical. This is what I mean: the formalities or morals that religion imposes are not of spiritual substance. The Spirit of God is the impetus that dictates to one’s mind what to believe, how to live, and how to love. If the inspiration is accepted, it will eventually enter the heart and materialize in the life.

Are you ready for this one? What hard-core evidence can we display beyond a shadow of a doubt in the court of God’s law which tells Christ, the holy angels, and doubting humanity that we believed and obeyed what He commanded? In other words, what tangible, undisputable proof can we present that we are real Christians? As mentioned in a previous post, most of what we do on earth is a distraction from keeping our minds on spiritual matters. The way to minimize these distractions and still be able to function in our sophisticated society will, at all times, be a great challenge.

The reason I coined what we do as “satisfying distractions” is because normally what we do in the course of a day gives us some form of satisfaction. It is this satisfaction that is harmful to our relationship with Christ. For when we are satisfied with whatever, it is impossible for spiritual substance to satisfy us—our spiritual satisfaction, if any, becomes superficial. Of course, what satisfies most is of greatest importance to us, whether we admit it or not. Even if worldly matters and spiritual matters were to have equal importance in our lives, the winner would always be the visible.

It is next to impossible to make God and Christ real—not that they aren’t real—when our lives are full of very important things we are so used to doing. When attempting to clean our lives of earthly distractions, we must be certain that we aren’t left in a vacuum. That empty area must quickly be filled with spiritual substance. If it isn’t, stop there. Don’t do any more cleaning until that time slot is filled with Godly affairs.

The most important activity that is needed in everyone’s life is prayer and fasting. The fasting from food, for a time, deprives us of our most basic satisfaction: desire for nutrition. When done with the right motive, fasting is pleasing to God and should bring us closer to Him. Fasting just for the sake of fasting is of little value to God, though it will have some physical health benefits. What is your reaction to this esoteric and off-the-wall post? Let us know.

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