Facades vs. Love

So it's morning...

I just woke up. And things still look a little fuzzy around the edges.

My eight o'clock class is canceled for the rest of the week. So I'm sitting on my bed wrapped in my comforter, eating a banana, and pondering life. Because that's just what I do.

Have you ever felt like you're just using GOD? Maybe you want to fit in with a certain group of people, to catch the attention of that certain person, or maybe it's just yourself you're trying to impress...but you use GOD to get what you want out of people and yourself.

(PS This isn't really something I'm struggling with right now, it's just something that's on my mind. Okay. End random interjection.)

There's a certain lifestyle that I see a lot of Christians struggling to attain and/or maintain. I watch men try to be "Godly men" who tie up their entire manhood in their relationship with GOD. I watch girls try to force themselves into super perky attitudes because they don't ever want to be perceived as not having joy. I watch people try to dress and act and think and say and be the right thing. And they try really, really hard.

But there's nothing really there.

I think I can safely say that I have entered the realm of maintaining the "Christian" facade and emerged on the other side with the realization that I don't have to be exactly like every other Christian. I've been there. So I also think I can safely say (from experience) that chasing after a lifestyle is empty. It's difficult. And at the end of the day you're left with memories of how you either managed to piece together enough of a good lifestyle to impress your fellow believers...or you're faced with how you failed.

How much easier and freeing it is to just do what Jesus commanded: Love GOD. Love others.

I've found that with just those two simple things...everything else just seems to fall into place. Yeah I screw up. But the nice thing about loving GOD is that in order to love Him the way He wants you to, you have to allow Him to forgive you your failures.

And the other nice thing about letting go of the lifestyle and just loving GOD and others is that it tends to eliminate the gray areas that we Christians run into. Rather than looking at something and struggling over whether it's right or wrong, black or white, you're faced with this question of if whatever it is you want to do will be loving to GOD and/or loving to others.