I have a friend from New Zealand. He has a really cool accent, is super funny, and is an all-around awesome person. Growing up, he was never really taught about Jesus, leaving him curious about Christianity when coming to Texas Christian University. I've had a few conversations with this friend about my faith, but they were never anything more than innocent questions asked and simple answers given. Last week, on a trip to Target, we somehow stumbled into this familiar conversation about God, but this time, the conversation ended differently.
“Why do Christians follow Jesus’ rules in the Bible when doing whatever you want is so much easier and so much more fun?”
This question left me a bit speechless. I realized in that moment just how important this question was for someone that didn’t know Jesus. I knew that this question had the power to make or break someone's desire to know and love God, and I knew in that moment that I didn’t have a good enough answer at the time. So, I did what any awkward person would do in this situation. I shook off the question in hopes that my friend would forget what he had just asked. Thankfully, he did, but I didn’t. For the past week and a half, i have been asking myself this exact question.
Why do I try so hard to live a life that reflects Jesus, and why do I strive to follow the rules laid out in the Bible?
If I had to give one reason why I try my best to live like Jesus, it would be because God loves me, but I knew that short response wasn’t enough to fully answer this question. This question doesn’t just have one answer. The answer to this question is so vast because God himself is so vast. God's love is so vast. God's sacrifice was so vast.
So, in order to answer this question, let me first ask something else. Why did our parents make rules for us when we were younger? Why did they give us a curfew? Why didn’t our dads let us go on dates until we were old enough? Why did our parents not want us to drink or do drugs?
They made these rules because they love us and they wanted to protect us and teach us. They wanted us home early because they wanted to protect us from the dangerous place the world becomes after dark. They wanted us to be safe. Our dads wanted to protect us from boys that would hurt us. They wanted to save us from the unknown. They wanted to teach us things that we could never learn without guidance. They loved us so much that they gave us rules that taught us how to grow up into a good person. They taught us morals and ethics. They taught us discipline. They protected us, and through their rules, they showered us with love.
In the same way, God gives us guidelines in the Bible because He loves us so much and wants us to have a great life, safe from the repercussions that sin brings to our lives. God knows that sinning leads to pain; maybe not immediate pain, but all bad things lead to unhappiness in the long run.
I'm not saying that these rules are easy to live by, and I’m not saying I successfully follow them all the time. I didn’t always listen to my parents either. I trusted my parents and loved them, but sometimes, the temptation of doing whatever I wanted got the best of me. I didn’t always come home by curfew, because whatever I was doing in the moment seemed to outweigh what the repercussions might be if I came home an hour later. I didn’t believe them when they said that being out late at night could be dangerous. Looking back on it now, I got lucky. I easily could have gotten myself into some serious trouble from not listening to what my parents told me to do.
Most of us realize now that we were fools in high school. We thought we were invincible, just like so many people think they're invincible to the repercussions of sinning. They think that doing bad things is never going to catch up with them, but God knows that one day, it will. My trust in God's all-knowing power is why I follow His rules in the Bible.
I know that God loves me so much more than I could ever imagine. I know that He wants the best for me. I know that no matter how much I want to live by my own rules, and how much I want to do whatever I want, what God wants me to do is always the better decision. Regardless of how fun breaking God's rules might seem, I know that living with Christ is so much more rewarding. I know that living by the rules of the Bible isn’t easy. I know that living like Jesus isn’t always appealing. But, if I know one thing, it's that God's love for me, and for anyone who is reading this, can outweigh every human desire we have to sin. Knowing that fact is the hard part; the easy part is letting God's love fulfill you in ways that giving into temptation never will.
