Why do I even care about spiritual journeys and how the church is using this analogy? Why bother detailing the specific issues I have with how the church guides you towards maturity? Is it just because I want something that makes me feel good? It’s not that I don’t like the idea of journey for a life of following Jesus. I get that it’s actually fairly accurate.
It’s that I don’t think it’s an honest analogy – at least not the way it’s typically used.
I want to get to the reality that is behind the analogy. I seek for truer meanings because I want a deeper faith. I don’t want to settle for cliches and decades-old answers. I wrestle, I analyze, I get disappointed because I want to much more because I know more exists. I don’t want to settle for the status quo, simply because it’s familiar. I want to stretch and grow. When I physically exercise, it’s only painful for me. When I stretch my faith, it’s painful for people around me.
We are called to make disciples, tell people about Jesus. My wanting more because there is more, is my way of telling people about Jesus.
That there’s more to Him than the church would have you think.
There’s more to living life with God and following Jesus than just knowing the right answer. Following Jesus is learning to impose His values on my life. There is nothing linear about that. From the beginning it’s messy. I can grab the beatitudes and find myself covered with dirt as I try to organize my life into them. The golden rule. Greatest commandments. They all end with the question ‘how’. How does it look to love my neighbor – my household, city, and global neighbor?
So what I want to know is, especially when the journey term is used, is there freedom in it? They say there’s joy in it, but is that true? Is the journey allowed to take place in the shades of gray, shades of grace, or is it only for the black and white world of morality? Is the goal of a spiritual journey to find the way to the white spaces?
I am frustrated by the unspoken goal of getting people on the right path, where they do the right things and say the right things and can check off all the boxes of their faith.
There is a better way to follow Jesus.
A more authentic, realistic and holistic way. An option that includes the others, that makes way for the freedom that lies in individuality. If God has created people with such diverse colors, personalities, gifts, desires and dreams – why do we insist there is only one way to believe and live? Why are we so afraid of the differences? Why do we want everything to be pretty and orderly? Can’t we embrace the mess and craziness of it all?
I don’t want a reduction of faith, of life with Jesus any more. This is a story! A narrative that we can be a part of. I can’t reduce my theology to verses any more. How do you reduce this……………..whatever this is following Jesus even is……..to a few select verses?
I want my focus to be on knowing the story, entering it and living it. I want to change my focus from simply learning things to the person I’m becoming. I don’t want to just know about Jesus. I want to learn to be like Him.
Every person’s journey is going to be different, because every life is unique. This streamlined journey view of Christianity makes it so that there is only one valid journey, which automatically invalidates so many people. It instantly divides, excludes, and others.
This is an issue because it hinders us from following Jesus the way we want and need to. How can you authentically follow, when you’re told the path you’re on is wrong?
I wish I had some awesome analogy to replace the journey analogy, but I don’t. Honestly, I don’t even know that the journey idea is all that bad. I just want to open it up to all of the possibilities it contains, and give validity to all the various ways we try and follow Jesus.