Being a follower of Christ is not rocket science. I spent much of my life thinking that it was. I spent many years placing guilt on myself if I could not “sufficiently” give “proof” for my beliefs. That is, I had to be able to both show from science and history that the Bible and Jesus were everything that they claim to be, and I also had to be able to prove from the Bible that the certain set of rules that I followed from Scripture were the “right” set of rules. This carried with it the constant fear of being wrong in your interpretation of the Bible, it cultivated a defensive atmosphere and also was very good at creating sides that we could all pick and defend.

I would contend that being a Christian is not rocket science. It’s not all that hard to figure out…living it out is something entirely different!

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Ok I’ve got to shift. I’ve written this whole post now (you just haven’t finished reading it) but another post, a more important post has emerged that I’ve got to get your input on. Here’s the question, do we really need Jesus to be a “Christian” (obviously the term christian itself is worthless without the christ part, but lets thats not the point)? Jesus simplified things by saying that the whole of Scripture could be summed up in two statements. Love God. Love people. But what I’m wondering right now is how essential is the “love God” part to what it looks like to be a follower of Christ.

Virtually all of the practices that define Christianity (if we’re being positive and not deconstructive) would be and should be practiced if you lived by the one simple rule to “love your neighbor” Here are some quick examples:

• Alcohol: If you continually  lived out of your love for people you would not drink too much alcohol because you would never want to impair your decision making in such a way as to do something destructive and to hurt people. Also it could be argued that a strong love for people can only be healthy within the context of an appropriate love of self. And if you value yourself you would take care of your body.
• Sex: You definitely wouldn’t be sleeping around or sleeping with anyone that was not firmly committed to being “yours” (I’d consider marriage to be this appropriate context) because how in the world could you ever justify sleeping with another mans not-yet-wife! Not to mention the fact that anyone who has had sex can attest to the life changing intimacy that takes place and the fact that if you love others you cannot take that piece of intimacy away from people that you are not forever committed to!
• Compassion: This is the most obvious of all. If your only rule in life was to love others than you would be serving the poor, collecting clothes for children, feeding the hungry, caring for widows and single mothers, etc. How could you not if you loved people (oh the irony I see in this bullet point)
• Church: you would most definitely be a part of a church. But it might not look like churches traditionally look like. If your only rule was to love people I imagine you would be compelled to get together with like-minded people to recharge and challenge each other to go back out and continue loving people in new and creative ways.

That was a quickly assembled four examples, but I believe that you could nearly reassemble all the practices of the Christian faith under the one umbrella “love your neighbor”. So the question is, do you really need to love God? And if so, how in the world is that played out? And please tell me that going to heaven and thus avoiding hell is the only impact of bringing God in the mix!