Benjamin L. Corey Quotes
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When we reorientate our lives on the person and teachings of Jesus, we become free to follow him wherever he leads—even if it is in an opposite direction as where our religious tradition might lead us.
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While it may be tempting to believe that GenXers and Millennials want less of Jesus, I believe the truth is that they want more of him. Those disillusioned with Christian culture simply long for a more authentic portrait of him. They just want the real Jesus.
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If one takes a public stand against, say, most any sin you can think of, one is considered "courageous" and a "defender of the faith." Folks will quickly applaud you and tell you how much they admire you for "taking a stand" on biblical truth. Except if you quote Matt. 5:44 and invite people to apply it in any sort of meaningful, literal way. The moment one begins to talk about loving your enemies they all of a sudden become "liberals," "extremists," or are accused of completely taking an otherwise straight forward passage "out of context.
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Drawing identity from any area other than the source of life is a spiritual death sentence, and worse, it's contagious, because it gives birth to tribalism. However, when we return to our central identity of image – bearers designed to receive love from and reflect love to others, we are naturally invited to shed all of the unloving, fear – based tribal behaviors that come from loyalty to the label.
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Western, individualistic culture invites us to embrace our independence and champion our ability to do this all on our own, but the life of Jesus invites us to embrace a healthy interdependency on others. The radical message of Jesus invites us to express and wrestle with our faith in a lifestyle of unbroken community with others. In Western culture however, living in community often is against the flow of how our society works. As culture has morphed deeper and deeper into a strictly individualistic-oriented culture, we now find ourselves in a world where it is not uncommon to not even know the name of our neighbors in the house next to us. What’s even scarier is that we might not even know the person sitting in the church pew next to us.
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When we see God through a fear-based lens, we end up with an inaccurate view of ourselves.
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If we want to rediscover the radical message of Jesus, we must stop diluting it by focusing on power, peace of mind, and prosperity. Instead, we must embrace the truly radical message that invites us to find life through laying it down. Ironically—if we do this—we’ll actually find the life we’re looking for, unfamiliar as it may be.
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Some might argue that the current generation seems uninterested in Christianity because they want to avoid issues like sin and repentance, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think people are hungry for Jesus, but they are starting to realize they have been fed a cheap American version, and they are rightly rejecting this counterfeit. Their rejection should be seen not as a rejection of Jesus, but a rejection of obscured versions of him. People are tired of being fed a watered-down version of Jesus. People are tired of an American Jesus. They want something that’s more…
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Saying out loud and naming what you don’t believe anymore breaks the power that fear holds over you. When you do this, you can grow and reshape your lenses, and ultimately yourself and your image of God.
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Had his teachings all been black and white, had they simply been condensed into a no-room-for-debate document designed to give us all of the clear-cut answers we long for, our hope and dependency would be on the answers themselves, instead of the person who can give them.
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It's important to remember that Israel's story is a story of being in the process of getting to know God, all before Jesus presents himself as the ultimate revelation of God. It is not unlike other relationships where we need time to fully understand and appreciate the true self and identity of the other person in the relationship. The story involves moments when Israel truly sees God, and moments when they profoundly misunderstand God--both of which are normal parts of any relationship.
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A fear-based faith distorts a lot of things, but what it distorts the most is the reflection we see in the mirror. Fear has a way of reflecting ugliness and distorted realities--lies with the appearance of truth--and gives us the false impression that fear tells the truth while concealing the reality that fear is a liar. It may be a good liar because it mixes fact with fiction, but it's a liar nonetheless. The reflections of fear must never be trusted, no matter how many nuggets of truth may be mixed in those ugly waters.
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I was used to having stones in my hands, but I realized now I needed both hands free to get to work… On me.
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Jesus isn't a mirror that reflects back all the reasons why we totally suck. .. Instead, Jesus is the one who says, "Just keep walking toward me, and I will help you increase your capacity to receive and to give love.
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Jesus never wanted us to have canned, prefabricated answers for every issue—he wants us to wrestle with the complexity of his message over and over again, until we are able to hold truth in tandem with tension. Truth must be held humbly next to the same hand that holds our doubt. Jesus, I believe, wants us to embrace the tension of faith and repent of our own need for certainty.
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As Christians in America, we’re often lulled into the false belief that somehow we have a monopoly on the pure and undiluted version of the message of Jesus. Unfortunately, we don’t. Christianity by nature has a tendency to blend in and become obscured by the cultural influences that surround it—such has been the case for nearly 2,000 years of Christian history.
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I continued to find myself in a constant process of attempting to deconstruct values that were cultural and replace them with the legitimate teachings of Jesus - no matter how crazy that made me look to the world or Christians around me.
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We are rarely conscious of all these things that are killing our faith because they become so enshrined in our belief system. And when we enter into an unexpected process of shedding off those things that we have grown comfortable with... Well, that moment feels like a crisis. It feels like our faith is falling apart. It feels like everything has gone wrong. But I'm convinced it's not a crisis at all, but the birth of a true faith.
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We must become people who remove barriers to God, instead of people who are busy installing new ones.
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I slowly began to realize that I had been wasting my time with a hyper-focus on why all the “others” were doing it wrong and began to release the icy grip I had on everything I thought I knew. I finally accepted that I would be much happier if I just focused on myself and taking my own faith journey seriously and stopped worrying so much about everyone else. As soon as I gave up on the idea of changing everyone else and exchanged it for a commitment to change myself, I saw my heart begin to change.
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Those who fit in neatly at church, those who are hyper-focused on the “law” are told to repent, but the sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes are invited to sit down for dinner, to share a glass of wine, and to build a friendship.
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However, if we want to rediscover the radical message of Jesus, we must rediscover the radical practice of living in community with others. Because that’s what he did.