The past year has been challenging for many reasons. God has challenged me mentally and spiritually in many ways, and as I am preparing for this journey, I am learning many lessons about me and my faith, and what my faith in God looks like in the long run.
And none of it is about me.
This past week I was volunteering at a musical camp and a church camp I used to work at, and I learned a thing or two about transnational faith, and I realized that this was how I have been defining my faith for most of my life.
Basically, transactional faith is when you follow God’s rules and try to do everything right, and just expect things from God in return. This is how many Christians view their faith. They donate money because they will get a tax break. They give presents to friends and family expecting presents back. They do every single good deed they can think of to get on good terms with God, in the hopes that their life will stay safe and sound if they do everything right.
But in faith, there is no guarantee, because faith isn’t about you.
Christian faith is very different from other faiths. It requires being in a relationship with God, which means it is constantly evolving as you grow and change and as the world changes as well. Faith is not as simple as ‘If I do this, then I get this” because relationships are not that simple. In any relationship, whether romantic, familial, friendly or cordial, that rule hardly ever applies. Sometimes you can do someone all of the favors in the world, but they still will not see eye to eye with you. Sometimes you can screw everything up, but your friends and family will still stay loyal to you. There are many factors that effect a relationship, and they are not at all predictable, just like God. Sometimes, bad things happen for no reason. Sometimes unexplainable tragedies occur. Sometimes wonderful things happen to terrible people. It’s upredictable, so to think that somehow we can control God’s unpredictable nature by simply following the rules seems silly.
But that’s because if we do good things expecting to reap the benefits of those good things, we are not living true faith.
Usually in healthy relationships, you think of yourself less than the person you are in a relationship with. You put their needs above your own, and you would lay down your life for them. We know that this is what a true relationship looks like, but when it comes to God, all of a sudden we turn the tables.
The purpose of faith is to spread the love of God to others, and celebrate His incredible sacrifice to us with all of the people of the world. We want to share the love we have with others, regardless of where they are from, what they look like or how they talk. This is what the kingdom of God is about. It’s not about us getting to heaven, but making a heaven here on Earth for others. It’s about giving what we have to offer to better the life of someone we don’t even know. It’s about walking to the ends of the Earth to give someone a minute of peace from God.
IT’S. NOT. ABOUT. US.
In a society that forces us to be very independent, it’s hard to shake the idea of transactional faith, but as soon as we set our sights on God and not ourselves, we can begin to see the world that God wants us to live in. God wants to spread His kingdom of love and peace for everyone, and we spread it by giving it away.
As I prepare to leave on this journey, I will be challenging myself to think more in this way, and put God at the center of my thoughts, so I can focus on what He wants me to do, and less on what I want to do. It will be a challenge, but it is a challenge that I finally feel ready to undertake.
Archived at https://jelysu19.wixsite.com/theoverflow/post/it-s-not-about-me
