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- Let’s Pretend for a Moment that You’re a Christian.
Let’s Pretend for a Moment that You’re a Christian.
Last updated on: February 25, 2025 at 2:30 pm by Rebecca Hamilton
Let’s Pretend for a Moment that You’re a Christian. 2025-02-25T14:30:40-07:00 Rebecca Hamilton
Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.
Image courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons by Art4TheGlryOfGod by Sharon
If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Jesus Christ.
Those who brazenly violate the Lord’s will, whether native Israelite or foreigners, blaspheme the Lord. Numbers 15: 30
Let’s pretend for a moment that you’re a Christian.
Let’s go a step further and pretend that you believe that Jesus Christ is God made human and that when He spoke, the God Who made everything there is, the God you will face when you die, was speaking.
What would such a belief look like in your daily life?
Think for a moment about what we’re pretending here.
The Tedious Details
Look at the nighttime sky. Consider the vastness of the universe. Meditate on the minuteness of a quark and the power of a black hole. Try to wrap your mind around the reality of two quantum particles, separated by hundreds of light-years of distance, vibrating in unison. Consider that when God shaped us from the dust of this earth, it was a process that extended over epochs. The poetry of Genesis is correct, but like all poetry, it leaves out the tedious details of how to tell us the all-important why.
Consider that God created time. He is outside time. When God looks at His creation, when He views this universe and any other universe that may exist beyond it, when He sees all of existence and all of time in one glance, He probably sees a dot. Existence exists in one eternal now, held together by a single thought in the mind of God.
Pretend for a moment that you are a Christian and that Jesus Christ is God — the eternal, everlasting God Who made everything everywhere and Who holds existence in existence with a thought — pretend that Jesus Christ is God who consented to be made human, born of a woman.
Love so Profound
God entered into our existence in an act of love so profound it defies comprehension.
Pretend for a moment that you have actually encountered the Living Christ in your life, that you have felt that inpouring of ecstatic love and joy, you have experienced what it is to truly walk with Him.
If you have ever met the real Jesus, if you have ever felt His love and experienced His forgiveness and been filled with the joy of His reception when you turn to Him, then you are at least a baby Christian. You have been filled with the Holy Spirit. You have met God, the real God. You, a biological organism raised up from the dust of a small planet circling an ordinary star in an outlier arm of a random galaxy living a finite, mortal life have met the God Who made you and everything else. And you know that the Scriptures do not lie. He truly is love.
That is the power of the incarnation. Jesus Christ is God, giving Himself to us in love. He. Is. God.
Jesus Christ is God and you shall not put any other Gods before Him.
Right-wing Political Christian
If you have ever encountered the Risen Christ, then you know — and I mean you absolutely, without question, KNOW — that the hideous, hate-filled, power-hungry, greed-driven, sin-soaked sickness of right-wing political Christian “teaching” has nothing to do with Him.
Right-wing MAGA Christianity is obviously satanic in origin. It is idolatry of a man who is a shameless moral degenerate and a political party which has become as degenerate as their leader.
I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.
That is the First Commandment. Every other commandment hinges on it. There is no halfway here. You can not follow other gods. You can not make an idol out of any thing or any person.
False Political Gospel of Hate
When you set aside the Ten Commandments and the Gospels in order to claim that lying, cheating, taking bribes, extortion, rape, racism, misogyny, greed, adultery, incest, cruelty, theft are all ok because your false god does them, then you are only pretending to yourself when you say you are a Christian.
Your righteousness isn’t good enough to be filthy rags.
When you deny the Sermon on the Mount in order to proclaim and follow a false political gospel of hate, selfishness and cruelty, you are in fact and in truth denying Christ.
It Will Not Get You Into Heaven
Jesus Christ cannot be the Lord of your life if you take everything He said and throw it in the trash so that you can follow the “teachings” of men who make you feel a frisson of satisfaction every time they degrade people you don’t like.
If you do that, it does not matter if you wear a big cross on your chest, or a t-shirt with a Bible verse. It doesn’t matter if you go to your bigoted, hate-filled church every day of the week. You can take communion twice a day and confess every morning. It will not get you into heaven if you deny Christ by following a false political God instead of Him.
Teaching a False Gospel
Stop pretending to be a Christian. Stop performing your Christianity and start living it. Stop blaspheming God by following false political idols.
Our religious leaders are lying to us when they tell us that lying is ok if a Republican does the lying. When they tell us greed is good, cheating is necessary, rape is ok, misogyny is a virtue, extortion is just the way things are done, theft is necessary and virtue consists in voting Republican they are teaching a false gospel that is satanic in origin. If you want to see heaven, do not follow them.
Do not bow down before false political gods.
I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. Exodus 20: 2a, 3, 5a
Those who brazenly violate the Lord’s will blaspheme the Lord. Numbers 15: 30
If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. Jesus Christ. John 14: 23
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