Every religion helps us contend with the unknown, but Christianity gives very practical advice on how to live well. If we consult the Bible, those directives distill to loving God first, then others as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40).
However, loving others is never easy, for quite a few interconnected reasons.
Problem #1: Vague Understanding
It’s easy to hear something, then not investigate it further. But if we don’t understand what something means, we’re only stockpiling information that boosts our ego (and possibly, our reputation) without adding any value to our souls.
As a culture, Christians can broadly demonstrate this lack of understanding when they use old language and styles without understanding their original purpose:
- Clothing styles that don’t reflect the attitudes of the original wearers (e.g., women wearing head coverings without a robe to match it).
- Identifying each other by words that don’t apply (e.g., calling someone “brother” or “sister”, but without the appropriate lifestyle that would reflect it).
- Honoring traditions without knowing how significant those traditions were.
2,000 years of Christianity have created cultural clichés that demonstrate how much we overestimate our understanding:
- The word “glory” is an archaic word for “reputation/honor” (1 Corinthians 10:31).
- The word “spirit” is often synonymous with “attitude” (Proverbs 18:14).
- Jesus being “Lord” means He’s a “Leader” or “Authority”, a bit like a king (Matthew 7:21).
- Jesus as a “Savior” means He’s a “Hero” (Luke 2:11).
- “Faith” means “trust”, specifically in God (Hebrews 11:1).
- “Love” has many uses in our language, and it most accurately converts to “selflessness” (1 Corinthians 13).
- “Fellowship” means “meaningful human connection” (Acts 2:42).
We don’t need to understand things, but should only act and teach what we know is absolutely true (Luke 17:1-2).
The largest indicator of not understanding comes through a type of mystical-sounding speech.
- This sort of speech is a bit performative, with vague terms or an unclear choice of words (1 Corinthians 2:1).
- While every form of mysticism is highly personal and tied to our personalities, the truth of Christ and the faith is absolute.
This means it may be best to speak less, especially in our Over-Information Age, and learn more (1 Peter 2:2).
Problem #2: Not Acting on What We Know
Even when we understand many parts of our faith, we won’t actually apply them (James 1:22).
This is easy to do because learning is merely consuming information with few risks, while doing something with it frequently comes with a variety of risks.
While lots of Christian culture would disagree, theological beliefs have a very limited use.
- A broad one-sentence understanding is useful for almost everyone (e.g., “Jesus’ blood paid all our sins”).
- As theology becomes deeper, it’s often less useful (e.g., “The sin payment from Jesus was a substitutionary atonement that fulfilled the Hebrew Law”).
- Some people can easily understand philosophical ideas. However, we must all learn rituals of devotion before we engage in the heavier things (1 Corinthians 3:1-9, Hebrews 5:11-14).
Sometimes we’ll do something God commands, and it’ll backfire spectacularly. That’s a good time to ask if it was loving, but not the time and place to simply learn more (1 Corinthians 8:1).
That sincerity is important. God absolutely hates insincere expression (Leviticus 10:1-3), but we need rituals as a necessary component to a healthy Christian journey (Luke 22:19) through the way they add meaning to our lives. This means we should educate ourselves on those rituals and not abolish them.
We must express our faith simply and sincerely, no matter how well-educated we become. Even a few days’ lapse is enough to fall back into the old habits we’re trying to remove.
Problem #3: How We Look
The Bible has such a strong emphasis on love because spiritual lives are always about right decisions that lead to moral habits.
However, we can more easily observe the consequences of decisions, which makes it painfully easy to obsess over the outside instead of the inside.
A relationship with God requires that we focus on that non-measurable aspect of our inner lives (1 Samuel 16:7) and is the most significant component of daily sacrificing ourselves to Christ (Luke 9:23).
Ironically, a church experience can sometimes distract us from our devotion to God. This is partly because the devil uses shame to steer us away from sincerity.
Many church-goers are afraid of the social effects of not appearing devout, so they simply lie about it:
- Saying they pray or read their Bible frequently when it’s more like 1–4 times a month.
- Discussing the importance that “we” must do specific things, but not owning that they feel compelled by their conscience to do something.
- Behaving as if they have spiritual gifts they don’t have, or trying to perform while they’re suffering at it (e.g., speaking in tongues).
- Quoting a Bible verse or other Christian leaders, but using that leader’s tone and style instead of their own personalized context.
- Using many complex-sounding words to deliver a relatively simple spiritual idea.
Further, religious implications can obscure some words to make them worthless for any meaningful specificity:
- “Sanctification” can mean “spiritual separation for God’s purposes” or “separation from the world” (1 Thessalonians 4:3).
- “Praise” can mean “devote time to thanking God” or “express public devotion to God” (Isaiah 25:1).
- “Spiritual gifts” can either mean “God-appointed tools of the soul” or “personality traits” (1 Corinthians 14:1).
- “Saved” can either mean “one who follows Jesus” or “one who made a confession of following Jesus” (Romans 10:9).
New believers do this, but false teachers often promote it, and this behavior sets a dangerous standard among the rest of the group. Beyond mere phoniness, that false standard can utterly poison a sincere believer’s soul (Matthew 16:6):
- It is understandable, however, since ministry leaders often feel the desire to overstate what they actually do to appear more spiritual.
- Many believers will conclude they’re not spiritual enough, or that everyone is lying.
- That discouragement or bitterness will discredit the few believers who are spiritually doing the work.
On the other side, religiousness can also feed into further sin with direct misapplications of Scripture:
- “There is nothing good inside me apart from Christ.” (Romans 7:18)
- Taking this idea too generally can discredit that God lovingly made us (Genesis 1:27-31) or that believers’ essence will directly reflect Christ later (Romans 8:29).
- “Only the Lord, and not me, is ever good.” (Mark 10:18)
- This mindset disregards the call to righteousness and the boldness of being in Christ (e.g., 1 Corinthians 11:1).
- “I am the chief of sinners.” (1 Timothy 1:15)
- Paul killed many Christians before becoming one himself, so only redeemed murderers have the right to say this.
Problem #4: Change & Hardship
The motivations to drive someone to accept Jesus as their Master can arise from various places:
- They sincerely acknowledge their sins and desire to restore their fallen state.
- They’re afraid of hell and its consequences.
- They examined and researched the facts as much as they could and concluded Christianity was the most logical faith.
- They’re searching for meaning and purpose.
- They suffer hardship and want freedom from it.
- They saw the effects of Christianity on their friends or family, and wanted what they had.
However it starts, a Christian will inevitably shift these motivations in their walk. They’ll often add many more reasons why they practice their faith. Half-hearted conversions as a peer-pressured trend may become something more authentic, or a quiet, desperate prayer might become entirely leaving the faith later on.
A relationship with Jesus must withstand all our seasons, which requires trusting God no matter what. This is especially critical when the hardship is so heavy that there’s no sensible reason to keep going (Matthew 11:6).
Each Christian has their journey, and those journeys are not the same. Some people will experience the hardship of loss, others will have the hardship of never having. The worst hardship of some believers will be the least significant troubles that other believers get every year.
This hardship strengthens us if we permit it, but we must follow our Master to find that strength (John 16:33). Even Jesus felt anticipatory anxiety (John 12:27, Matthew 26:38) and hopelessness (Matthew 27:46).
Problem #5: Overthinking Things
Jesus commands us to show up and be faithful. Specifically, He asks us to carry our death penalty device every day (Luke 9:23).
This, however, doesn’t make sense to any rational experience we can have. Success in anything requires making a goal and sticking with it, right?
However, God’s commands are, by our standards, stupid and insane:
- The answer to not having water is to hit a rock once (Exodus 17:1-7).
- The solution to a heavily walled city is to walk around the city for 6 days, then again on the seventh day 7 times, then yell really loud (Joshua 6).
- If your army is too small, you may need to make it smaller (Judges 7:1-8).
- Within the Gospels alone, this is practically a trope:
- Jesus commands the disciples to do something.
- They’re confused or complain, but still do it.
- A miracle happens.
Without the plan coming from God, we’d throw anyone with that advice out of our planning committee. Beyond what we must do next, it’s frequently better for our sanity if we don’t know. Saying “do your will” fully releases personal responsibility (Matthew 6:9-13).
No matter how bad things get, we must persist in remembering that God is in control. We’re only trusting the plan because we trust the Planner: the plan seems pretty dumb while we’re doing it.
Problem #6: Complacency
When we do something consistently, it becomes habitual, and our souls aren’t always part of mindless habits. This can make it easy to find comfort with anything we’re doing once we start seeing the effects of God working in our lives.
Every time we do something, we become increasingly less aware of it. Like any other healthy habit, we must steadily maintain and add to it (2 Peter 1:5-7). The first decision was the most moral, and we only add to that morality when we work to stay aware of how we can improve our good deeds.
Beyond eradicating our sins, God wants us to make conscious decisions that develop virtues (Romans 2, 1 Peter 1:13-16). This effort to renew and conform our minds never technically stops (Romans 12:1-2).
The challenge comes through that daily grind of doing the same thing. We tend to crave new things after a while, and a devoted Christian life can sometimes be boring, similar to strengthening the body. While we do reap its consequences, it requires patience (Romans 12:9-12).
The only way to fix the boring parts of life is to find creative solutions within those boring components. Find new ways to worship, study the Bible, serve others, and pray. Your new approaches will not offend God!
Problem #7: Majoring on the Minors
We are waiting for Jesus to come back. Everything, until then, stays broken and fallen.
Sometimes, our desire for goodness can provoke us to obsess over something relatively minor.
- There are some really petty things that Christians have fought over (e.g., Johannine Comma, Triclavianism). This is an utter waste of time.
- Other things are worth debating, but don’t technically affect salvation (e.g., nobody will go to hell because they believe they can lose their salvation).
- Some things are worth opposing, but have historically created severe schisms in the Church.
Either way, we must always do it in love (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). This demonstrates through a type of gentleness and the desire for reconciliation.
Unfortunately, the very essence of logic is to divide (“either A or B”), so we must be very careful how we use logic and reasoning with others. The Gospel message is simple and contentious enough, so we don’t need to add any more controversy to it.
Problem #8: Too Much “Doing”
If we do persevere, we will often run into a different, opposite problem from complacency. All that effort we’ve applied means we’ll start identifying with what we’ve done.
We must never forget our place in life. God designed us for His enjoyment (Revelation 4:11), and He did not optimize us for efficiency. For absolutely any task we do, an animal or angel can do it better. It should humble us that we have those limits, but we take ourselves way too seriously:
- We kick around and throw balls as children, then spend good money as adults watching other people kick around and throw balls. We also distinguish those two as if they’re separate.
- Most wars are over who gets to use a geographical region, even though there’s usually enough empty territory for everyone.
- Intellectual property disputes are over someone having the right to use someone else’s thoughts. However, a thought derives from other thoughts, which all came ultimately from God.
- The only sign of mental wellness is a sense of humor, which is the result of releasing our initial adverse feelings to permit the silliness of many things to present themselves.
We must never forget our identity is in Christ and what He has done, not in what we do (Ephesians 2:8-10). God loves us for the image He built into us, not anything we do.
Problem #9: Shame
One overarching problem that makes all the previous issues more difficult is the problem of shame.
We have many hidden sins, and we constantly deceive ourselves about them (Jeremiah 17:9). Every Christian will eventually have to confront and integrate their “shadow self” as the inescapable, short-term desires of their flesh.
We are responsible to own these “shadow thoughts” as our own if we want God to free us from them (Romans 2:1-11). This is not easy because they’re incessant, and our quest to eradicate them never technically ends in this life (1 John 1:8).
Any shame we have will interfere with God’s plans for our lives, since there’s a time and place for just about everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8):
- The aggression from rage can also stand against evil.
- The fear of self-destruction is also how we wisely manage risks.
- The sorrow of depression is also the way we feel compassion for others.
The only way for His work to run its course is to be utterly honest with ourselves when it hurts the most. If we don’t, religious shame and guilt can push us into hypocrisy instead of self-awareness (Matthew 23:23-32).
Problem #10: The Rest of the Church & World
Other denominations do things differently. It’s sometimes heresy or a cult, but it’s more often a matter of personal preference. The original Church culture was a Jewish cult in Rome-occupied Palestine. 2,000 years have introduced numerous additions, subtractions, movements, abolitions, traditions, and redefinitions.
Assuming no salvation-ruining heresy that destroys the central Gospel message, all Christian denominations are 40-60% correct, though some of them are more correct than others:
- Catholics understand the importance of ritual, but don’t understand the joy and freedom in Christ.
- Protestants understand joy in Christ, but undermine the value of tradition.
- Pentecostals know how to trust the Holy Spirit, but often have terrible theology.
- Baptists tend to have accurate theology, but tend not to trust the Holy Spirit.
- The Hutterites understand the importance of being not of the world, but fail at being in the world.
- Evangelical megachurches are certainly in the world, but they’re frequently of the world as well.
The rest of the world will also easily distract us:
- We’d all like to see the broad-reaching political effects of large-scale events before they happen.
- We have no idea when Jesus will return, and tend to make nonstop predictions about it.
- We can sometimes see when persecution will come, but we will forget all the false positives when persecution didn’t come.
- Political leaders, in free societies with unpersecuted Christians, often hijack Christians’ intent and sell them on worldly moral crusades. This has included the Catholic crusades, the Hays Code, disputes about contracts or rights, the legality of specific substances, and privacy laws.
We must understand that the world will travel its path, and we must travel ours (1 John 4:4-6), which means they will be a lot louder and more conflicted than anything believers should do. While the world is destroying itself, the meek Christians will eventually inherit the earth through their good conduct (Matthew 5:5, James 3:13).
This becomes increasingly difficult as technology brings society into closer range of influence with each other. Eventually, the prophesied end will come when a global society will collectively project its unconfessed sins against God. It doesn’t serve any advantage to our faith to obsess over when and how that’ll happen.
Problem #11 – Self-Conceit
While any of the above are a risk in their own right, self-righteousness is a worse risk than any of the rest because we become completely oblivious to the necessary corrections God would otherwise give us.
Pride is a constant battle, and is a never-ending challenge as we succeed at the rest. In fact, growing in Christ can easily become its own conceit and is the cause of most church conflicts.
If we don’t always maintain awareness that we always lack at least some understanding, we won’t listen to correction. At its farthest, we won’t even be able to hear God’s direct discipline (Proverbs 17:10).
The only time we can speak with authority on eternity is when we have encountered it directly, and all legitimate spiritual authority comes directly from the Lord (Jude 9).
Conclusion
Walking with God is highly personal in the ways we can fail. It’s not very glamorous, and only God Himself can fully see how we’re managing our souls.
While it applies differently for each person, we will avoid most pitfalls with the right attitude about our time and other people:
- Focus on the present with joy. Every moment, you are free to communicate with God, and Judaism’s extra ceremonial work is no longer necessary. He wants you to pursue that freedom and release it all to Him.
- Only look to the future about what you can do today, and as your faith can withstand, but no more. God has the rest of it under control, so release it all to Him.
- Take the good parts of the past and try to fix pieces of the past that affect the present, but release it all to Him.
- Ignore what everyone else is doing. They have to manage their relationship with God, and after you’ve warned them, it’s your job to move on and release it all to Him.
We haven’t “attained” salvation, though Jesus has, and we must run an endurance race. The finish line is when one of our primary organs fails without a suitable and timely replacement (2 Timothy 4:7).