Is it possible to hate Jesus and love Christianity? I think so. And we all must wrestle with this. Hating Jesus and loving Christianity is embedded deeply in all of us. We all must forsake it, but it is much easier to feed it.

First, how could this even be possible? When we confess that we have surrendered to Jesus, we believe that we have salvation. And if we really came to Jesus, then we really are saved from our sins. But, after time, we find that maybe we didn’t surrender to Jesus at all, but came under a SYSTEM with the name of Jesus attached to it.

A system is simply a set of repeatable actions, when correctly applied, leading to a specific result. Systems are wonderful because they give us expected results as long as each action is correctly identified and executed. (One of the systems in our body is the circulatory system. It is a whole process of repeatable actions that pumps blood and nutrients throughout our body — as long as everything is doing its job.)

But a relationship doesn’t act like a system. A good relationship demands attention; relationships can’t “run in the background.” They need to be at the forefront of our time and attention if they are to be dynamic and life-giving. The give and take of good interaction is the life-blood of relationship. IN relationship there is love and joy, but not predictable results.

Relationship is messier, harder to understand, and unquantifiable. That is what our relationship with our Heavenly Father is like. But we don’t like this, so we run to works with it’s understandable processes and predictable results. As we run to a system, we are running from Jesus.

The three main systems that are in competition to genuine faith in Jesus in the church are doctrinalism, moralism, and pentecostalism. Correct belief, holiness, and receiving gifts of the Spirit are important parts of a walk with Jesus, but when they are embraced as THE way of relating to Jesus and others, then we surely have left Jesus and ventured into a system of works.

So how can correct belief, obedience, and living a supernatural life go wrong and make us miss Jesus?

That is the subject of my next post.