The Christian Life As Time Goes On

As I approach the 20-year mark of being a Christian, I sometimes wonder, 

"What is insight groomed by age, and what is insight imbued by Christ?" 

And I believe, of course, it is both: God allows life to be the portal through which we either grow closer to, and more reliant upon, His Son, or, over time, distance ourselves.

Certainly one can obtain sage perspective without Christianity: I would posit that one who does this is in fact growing up in the basics of Christ’s ethic without having lived under Him as Lord and Savior. 

Anyone, I believe, who has found a modicum of functioning integrity in their life is, perhaps without knowing or perceiving it, founded on God’s principles. 

For me, however, the living out of an Aesop’s Fable "good" attempt at living always came up short when I thought about death—that of myself and of others. 

The secular world of actualization also never satisfied; no matter how hard I tried in work or in play, or what I accomplished, it seemed that it was never enough, be it in quantity or quality. 

So while I could perhaps fool others with an “up” persona, and yes—even myself at times—in the end I was internally disgruntled about many situations and people, and often overcome by a pervading inadequacy. 

The point I’m getting at is this: without Christ, anything legitimately good that I understood to have originated with me became the basis for pride since I didn’t have anyone else (Jesus) to credit it with. 

Any other “good” that was, in fact, not good by Jesus’ standards was deemed to be "good" by the world’s standards, or simply by the fact that I was “human.”

So if I cheated, or cursed, or partied all night: that was deemed okay because I’m a “human with human needs;” or because the majority of people in my life also cheated, cursed and partied, making these actions fine—in fact, to not do them would be weird and elicit negative judgment.

Also in the secular "good life," the norm in relationships is always to watch out for one’s self and blame everyone else. It’s what I saw modeled all around me and thus, adopted, before I was blessed to pick up the Bible and begin reading. 

That's when Christ came along with His upheaval: the beginning of the true straight and narrow. 

And straight and narrow it is, with yet a pretty wide berth of grace. And that is what I will get to in the next post.

copyright Barb Harwood