Is faith a lifestyle choice?
Most of the time I feel really uncomfortable with the demands Churches make on people's time and money on God's behalf. I worry about the power structures involved and often the infantalizing of the membership that are involved. And yet...
When we watch shows like the x factor and listen to people talk about how much being in the show means and how hard they are going to work, only to see them not bother to learn the songs we know that there has been a degree of delusion going on. We know the hopefuls who promise everything and then fail to put in the leg work are kidding themselves. If we are honest we may admit that that is part of the fun of the show. If everyone was hard working and reasonably talented, we would probably have given up on it by now.
What if following Jesus is like that. What if all those promises to forgive and to love unconditionally were one's we were supposed to keep. There might be quite a bit of work involved, Christianity could involve commitment, and being transformed by a process of struggling to live up to the calling of the Gospel. Would honest self examination mean admitting that we take the bits we like from Church, but leave the work to others, or that we enjoy the comforts of faith without following through on it's demands. If so perhaps we need to hear the Church calling us to a more challenging discipleship, and pointing out the narrow gate and hard path that we need to take if we want to follow Jesus.
