Absolutely crucial spiritual direction

If you ask any Christian, whether Catholic or not, what is the most important requirement of their faith, I would bet that most of the replies would be “To follow Jesus” or to “Emulate Jesus.” Over the years I have noticed, however, that an error in the common perception of emulating Jesus is growing and growing until it has actually been a significant contributor to the global faith crisis. I’m not going to say what the error is upfront, but I’m going to step you through a kind of “resetting” process so that you will see for yourself.

If you want to emulate someone, how do you go about doing so? The answer is that you observe the person’s actions, attitudes and values, and then use them as a role model for your own life. So you start by observing what the person does and then you apply the same principles to your own life. Alright, so where do we gain the information about Jesus in order to emulate him? Clearly by reading the New Testament of the Bible, which contains all the known information (and thus all that is required) to know and follow Jesus. So you read the New Testament and thus see the sayings and deeds of Jesus through the writers of the Gospels and the Epistles. Now, if you are going to emulate Jesus, you have to now think about, how did Jesus spend his time? In other words, what did Jesus do and what were his priorities?

While Jesus didn’t punch a time clock and leave a project time analysis it is pretty obvious how he assigned priorities and spent his time. But is it so obvious? This is where the problem has crept into modern people’s selective understanding of the scriptures. How did Jesus spend most of his time?

1. Talking about God.

During the time of his public ministry Jesus spent most of the time “on the road” with the Apostles and disciples and the conversation would have been substantially about God. Thus, Jesus spent most of his time talking about God with his companions.

2. Praying to God.

It is documented that Jesus spent many long hours in prayer, often throughout the night. Thus the second highest priority and chunk of Jesus’ time is in prayer to God.

3. Preaching the word of God.

Jesus traveled from synagogue to synagogue and preached therein. Jesus also preached to individuals, small groups and great crowds.

4. Providing instruction about God.

The many parables and other specific statements by Jesus are his devices to explain God’s nature and will in an instructional and explanatory way rather than preaching God’s word, so this is why I point it out as a large proportion of his time separate from preaching. Here Jesus discussed prophecy and the nature of the Kingdom of God.

5. Performing miracles and healing the sick.

When you read all four Gospels you can surmise that while Jesus would spend a great deal of time performing miracles (since the Gospels record that he cured hundreds in entire villages at a time on occasion, in addition to the specific miracles recorded) the miracles and healing were used to validate the mission and mercy of God with which Jesus was empowered. In other words, it was important but it’s not like Jesus established miracle hospitals where he sat there curing all day long.

6. Prophecy regarding what would happen to him and making plans for the Church to follow him.

Notice that Jesus did not spend a huge amount of time discussing his fate or spelling out every step that the Apostles should take both while he is there and after he is gone. It’s not that Jesus was being secretive, far from it. Jesus obviously knew that his time was short and so he kept the Apostles and disciples focused on the above five activities for the vast majority of the time, so they would understand as much as they could by actually living and doing.

7. Demonstrating mercy, charity and compassion.

Ah. Now we come to it. If you analyze, as we have just done, how Jesus “invested” his time during public ministry, there we have it, where five of the seven ways he spent his time were about proclaiming God, one was about proclaiming himself and the Church to come, and the last in the list are statements and actions regarding actual acts of charity, mercy and compassion.

What I have observed is a dragging down of the concept of emulating Jesus from what he actually did to what people imagine that Jesus “expects them to do.” I have observed all too many Christians, including Catholics, summarize “emulating Jesus” as “seeing Jesus in the most wretched among us.” Huh?

How have believing Christians come to this? How have believing Christians come to the point where they no longer spend the vast majority of their time glorifying God and contemplating his will and instead, hardly discuss God at all, and instead think that they are “seeing Jesus is the wretched in the street?” Truly I tell you that if Jesus came back for a quick audit the biggest thing he would be disappointed with is that lack of glory and focus being given on the great, merciful, all knowing and all powerful God, and the focus being entirely shifted from looking upward to heaven to looking for God in every sick and poor person tossed out on the street. Just because Jesus warned repeatedly that people will be judged regarding the charity that they extend, that did not become the “bottom line” of “emulating him.” Truly I tell you that Jesus would flip his lid (much more than I am, by FAR) to see that people have reduced the glory of God into “perceiving him in the poorest and sickest person you can find.” That is NOT what Jesus was saying.

God has somehow been dragged down in perception as being equal to the bum in the gutter, or the sick person in a poverty stricken country, or some flood victim. I’ve seen this skewing and distortion take place in front of my very eyes over the past few decades. The poster child for this is Mother Teresa. No wonder she had aridity in finding God! She expected that God is some poor dying AIDS person in an alley in Calcutta. There is a huge difference between Jesus explaining that God will judge charity “as if” he were the person who was suffering and needed help and now reducing one’s popular concept of God himself as being wounded, degraded, and afflicted!

This problem has been bugging me for years now, as I’ve tried to figure out why people are so blasphemous and undignified in their perception of God, and I include the “faithful” in this category. There has been some sort of huge disconnect and it’s not just because of the valid suspicion that Christians have forgotten about God while focusing on Jesus (which is the heart of traditional suspicion of Christianity by devout Muslims), although that obviously is part of it. There has been a modern “formulaic” approach to faith that is causing this disconnect, which is forgetting about God himself and the need to know, understand, worship and obey him and instead “what do I need to do to get saved?” And trust me, not worshipping God but thinking that you are going to get saved because you fed a bum under a bridge in San Francisco because “you see the Jesus in him” is not going to work out so well. I’m sorry to say I am not exaggerating to be colorful this error at all when I put it so crassly. That is EXACTLY what I perceive in the minds and calculating hearts of many, far too many, Christians.

The dragging down of the dignity of God, by both Catholics and other Christians, is obvious in many ways. The lack of mention and focus on God himself in his very worship services is scandalous. The increasing “social services department” approach to being “a good Christian” makes it hard to tell the difference between an agency and a church sometimes. People who troop around the world looking for some destitute target to “find the Jesus in them” rather than spending much time in daily prayer to GOD is another clue. The pious Christian of a century ago would not recognize his or her counterpart today at all. Obviously I’m not saying to not be charitable (and in fact, I believe that genuine charity is in too short supply, in part because it has become so self righteous and self serving in nature). But even the most vigorous Victorian pious reformer would be horrified at this “looking for Jesus in the face of some sick impoverished fellow” distorted attitude that is prolific today. Pious reformers PRAYED TO GOD AND FEARED GOD, and then went about their charitable and reform missions. They would be horrified at the thought that people think they are “seeing Jesus” in the most wretched among humans and worse, thinking that is a shorthand for the power, might and dignity of God too! Argh, I am so scandalized I can barely type this. But it has to be said because I’m telling you, if I am scandalized you have no idea what the reaction of “real Jesus” and “real God” truly is about this incredible devolution in maintaining the dignity of worship and fear of the one God. This, by the way, is a peril that Orthodox Jews seem to have very successfully avoided.

I hope all of you do some big fat soul searching here because I’m telling you, this will not abide. God will not be mocked and diminished indefinitely and no one makes that more clear than Jesus Christ himself. If you want to emulate Jesus Christ and if you want to even hope to “follow him,” you better copy his example and restore the dignity and priority of God in all of lives and your “works.” I cannot emphasize this enough.