Thinking

What does living like Jesus look like? I mean really? Seems to me, at least in America, we equate living like Jesus with going to church. The more you are like Jesus the more you are at church. You sing in the choir or the praise team, you teach class, you go 3 times a week. Then there is your out-of-church life. You don't curse. You are mostly honest. You don't steal. You are a good neighbor...a good employee...or a benevolent employer.

But really, is that it? You sing that old hymn "O to be like Thee" and define that by the above? I'm seriously asking because I wonder. I wonder how God looks at these efforts? It seems to be when I read the gospels that Jesus was pretty much fed up with the 'church folk'. He did more rebuking of the religious right than he did anyone else. I'm coming to the conclusion that we have organized, structured, and preserved a method more than a manner.

I hear about young twenty something Christians deciding to live like Jesus. It doesn't look like the above. They move into communities that are perhaps less than desirable. They open the doors of their homes and invite God to show them where He's at work. They drink coffee with neighbors, hold parties for neighborhood kids. They don't "do church" in a building anywhere. They meet in homes -- I imagine kind of like the first century church did. What they are doing is making a difference. A real difference. An eternal difference. It gives me great hope for the future of the church in America. But if I'm honest?

It scares me too. There is much required to live like that. Much harder than doing church. More questions than answers. More faith than structure. More living than programs. I don't want to stop growing. I don't want to insist that this generation do it the way my generation did or the one before....much of what we hang on to is rooted solidly in 20th century America. But growth? It's scary. It's uncertain.

What does living like Jesus look like? I hope to figure that out a little more with each day.