Living Christianity
My personal dilemma.
I am both a real Christian and a cultural one. That is to say, I do outwardly Christian things like go to church and I have a personal relationship with God because I trust in Jesus’s “finished work on the cross” — a common phrase used by Christians with other Christians familiar with the lingo. I try to operate honestly but also know I can’t live up to God’s best for me all the time.
Whether I am behaving as the Cultural Christian or I am living out of a deeper more authentic life filled by God's love, the difference will likely be difficult for me to discern directly. Instead, I think I will learn to live a more authentically Christian life by working to be a good friend over trying to impress God with my quiet time rituals. Struggling to be kind in challenging relationships is a great feedback loop to help me work on my own motives and behaviors.
“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
Thomas Merton, No Man ls an Island
Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.