Thou shalt be right. Thou shalt be right. Thou shalt be right. Thou shalt be correct. You would think that that is all over the Bible. The way Christians church, people hold it in such high regard, that being right or correct or biblical as they would say, is actually the most supreme thing that you could do as a follower of Jesus. I wanna chat today about a couple things that have been on my mind. Again, I'm speaking from the view of unlearning things about church and religion and learning new things about God's beautiful kingdom, and those are very different things. They're very different things in the world we live in today. I don't know that they're necessarily, necessarily meant to be different, but I'm telling you from the inside out, from someone who grew up in church and from someone who served as a pastor for almost a decade, those are very different things. And if you hang around Christians or church people. One thing you'll notice above all else is that they claim to be biblical. That their instant rebuttal to anything outside of the scope of their limited worldview is that that's not biblical. That's not biblical. That's not biblical. It's as if the Bible has the number one commandment. Thou shall be biblical and correct and right and accurate. But guess what? It's not in there. Go ahead. Look it up. It's not in the Bible. I've never found that scripture. Maybe I've missed it. Maybe it's buried somewhere back in the Old Testament and I just missed it. But what I want to think about today, what I like to introduce to you today is a thought that I've been chewing on that you can be biblical. But you can also at the same time, be nothing like Jesus. You can be biblical but not Christlike at the same freaking time. And if you ask people on the outside of Christianity, on the outside of church, I think they would say, yeah, duh, all the time. Because I think the issue is not Jesus. Obviously Jesus' love and compassion and forgiveness and grace. Jesus is about stooping down and helping those in the margins. But church and religion has so much become about accuracy and rightness, and correctness and doctrine and biblical, biblical, biblical. So I was just thinking about that today. I was thinking about being a Christian is not primarily about being right. Like, I don't know, like maybe we just need to say that out loud. Being a Christian is not primarily about being correct. It's about participating in the life of Jesus, the life of Christ. It's about staying in the flow, about being connected to the Father. It's about showing up and caring about the things that God cares about. You know, the church has a long history of probably, I would say. Being very, very biblical, but not being very Christlike. You think about some of the church history, the Crusades, we literally went into other countries to try to kill and destroy people who believed differently than us. Um, not Christlike, uh, the Spanish Inquisition. What a freaking mess that was. Where the church and the government mix and all these people are beheaded and chased down and put on trial, um, and not Christlike. Slavery. I mean, the fact that slavery existed in America and was protected and defended, racism, protected and defended by those who say they know and follow Jesus, not Christ, like even Satan. We have examples in scripture where Satan uses scripture. He knows the Bible. The entity, the enemy knows scripture and uses it when he is talking to Jesus and attempting Jesus. He uses scripture. He says it is written. So this is the thing, knowing scripture and being biblical is not the big deal. Like who cares? Okay. That's a little much. It's not who cares, it is. It is it foundational story. But I think we miss. We miss it. We cover everything with this covering of, it's not biblical. It's not biblical, but guess what? How do you treat people that are different from you? How do you treat people that are weaker than you? How do you respond to power? How do you respond to people in the margins? How do you stand up for the oppressed? How do you reach out to people who are hurting and broken? How do you love? If you don't love, but you know the Bible, big freaking deal, it means nothing. It literally means nothing. A couple scriptures on the top of my mind. One First Corinthians, this is called the Love Chapter because really this is like the heart of what the gospel is. If you could say a scripture that basically is theology of about Jesus and God in the kingdom in one sort of chunk. I would say first Corinthians 13 is it, but I just wanna share the first couple verses with you,'cause I think it's relevant to what we're talking about again, one Corinthians 13. It says this verse one, if I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy, but I don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. Just noise is what it's saying. If I speak God's word, the word, the Bible, if I speak God's Bible with power, revealing all his mysteries, making everything plain as day, defending what's right, and if I faith says to a mountain jump and it jumps. I don't love, I'm nothing. I'm 1000% missing. A point continues if I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr. But I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. No matter what I say, what I believe or what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. To me, this is the crux of the issue. This is the broken part of Western American, so-called Christianity, is that we are right. We say the right things, we preach the right things, but we exclude everybody who doesn't 100% agree with our team. That's not what the kingdom is about. The kingdom is where everybody's included. Everybody's invited to the table. Everybody has a seat at the table because everybody is a child of God made in his divine image. So who could possibly be excluded from that? Who are we or you or I to say, you don't get to sit at this table because you do this or you think this, or you hang out with this, or you believe this, that's not right, but religion loves it. Religion loves it. Let's continue on another scripture. Let John chapter five, verse 39. This is Jesus speaking, and he says this, you have your heads and your bibles constantly because you think you'll find eternal life there, but you miss the forest for the trees. These scriptures are all about me, and here I am God in the freaking flesh, standing right before you, and you aren't willing to receive me from the life you say you want. That's powerful. Jesus is saying, I'm standing here the way, the truth and the life God. In the flesh showing you what the kingdom looks like, telling you what God cares about, introducing you to a life of love, and you want nothing to do with it because your head is in your Bible, you're defending your rules and your system. It's like, we call it God's kingdom, but it's not. It's your kingdom. It's your church. Religious kingdom bubble that you wanna defend your team, who's right, who's wrong? You're always right. Guess what? Everybody always thinks they're right. I dunno if you know that. Every denomination always thinks they have it perfectly right? Like really? I don't know. It just seems like so much nonsense to me, like we're missing so much of the big deal. Last one I wanna share with you. This is from Matthew 23, and again, this is Jesus. Starting with verse four, he says this, instead of giving you God's law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads and wouldn't think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual. Fashion shows embroidered prayer shawls one day in flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners. Basking in the most prominent positions. P preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees and getting called doctor and reverend a few verses later. Jesus continues. He says, I've had it with you. You're hopeless. You religion scholars, you, pharisees, you frauds. Your life's are roadblocks. Roadblocks to God's kingdom. You refuse to enter and won't let anyone else in either. That's sad. That's sad. And I see that same thing today. It's like we've become roadblocks. The problem isn't Jesus, the problem isn't the kingdom. The problem isn't that everybody's loved always. Everybody's always included. That's the good news story. The problem. Is the barriers and the roadblocks and the biblical correctness that we demand, as if that's the most important thing. You can be biblical but not Christlike, and maybe you know people just like them. Maybe that's you. Biblical, biblical, biblical. Your Bible, biblical knowledge of rules means nothing if you don't love people. Like, I don't know if these scriptures could be literally more clear. It doesn't mean anything if you aren't showing up in life and putting yourself second of living outside of your ego, of seeing a bigger story in a more beautiful picture. If you're not living into this kingdom dream of Jesus, of putting others before yourself, and it's a journey. We're not perfect, but we're called to this. We're invited into this, and it's a better way to live, is what I'm telling you. It's a better way to be human than the rules and the laws and the religion. All the biblical doctrines that you're forced to agree to, and you're banished and banned if you'd miss one of them. How do you treat people around you that need your help? How do you treat the weak, the people who are being put in the margins, the people who are being overlooked or taken advantage of? The people who are being treated as if they're not even human. The people who are being treated as if they don't belong to the family of God, as if they're not created in God's image. How do you defend and stand in for and treat those people? How do you show up for those people? I'm not talking about your church friends, your church bubble, your youth group, your small group, your Bible study group, your men's group, your women's group. I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about the Insiders Club. I'm talking about how you show up in your day-to-day to the people. That you've come across your neighbors as Jesus calls them. Love your neighbor as you love yourself and love God. Those are the two commandments that Jesus lays down and he says they cover all the other commandments. You know, there's 613 commandments in the Jewish scriptures, 613 of them. And Jesus says Those two right there cover everything.'cause it's all about love. God is love. God is not. Accuracy to your scripture. God is not laws. God is not doctrine. God is not agreements. God is love. Live into love is what we're invited into. Feel that for yourself as well. I know a lot of times I put this focus on the outward. How do we show up and treat others, but guess what? Receive this for yourself. You are loved when you don't get your biblical doctrine right? You are loved before you ever even knew what a Bible was before you ever stepped foot in a church, before you ever said a thing called a sinner's prayer. You are part of the family. You are invited, you are included. How could you not be? You are made from the divine image. You are a child of the living God. God is in you and in love with you. Jesus came to rescue you. The story includes you. It's already there. Like the old framework I grew up in was, you're bad, you're evil. You have this terrible sinful nature. And then thank God that Jesus dies in your place. And now you're covered. The new framework I'm seeing. Scripture. The bigger, more beautiful story is this. You forgot who you are. Jesus came to show you who you really are, who you've always been, and now you get to wake up and believe that and lean into that. That's faith. That's faith people. That's what means to follow Jesus. That's what it means to be a Christian, a mini Christ, a follower of Jesus. Followers of Jesus follow Jesus. They don't just know things about Jesus. They believe and put their lives on the line and follow him. They, they shape what they care about and who they are based on the things he cares about. And he cares about people. He cares about his creation. He cares about history. He cares about humanity. God is breaking in. The kingdom, Jesus says, is breaking in all the time We're invited to follow. But I wanna say this to Christians out there. We need to love better. We need to be advocates for the weak, for the overlooked, for those people who are being taken advantage of in our cities and in our country, at our workplace, in our school. You should be the, that defender. You should be that defender. Love shows up. Anyway, I gotta breathe for a second. That's a lot. I know. And, uh, it's a little bit all over the place because, you know, this isn't a sermon. This is a rant on my own personal podcast, and so I hope it resonates. I hope that we can just set aside this like, like the highest pillar that we could ever achieve is being right. Thou shall be right. Your rightness doesn't matter if you don't love people, and Jesus says, really, there's two things to get right. Two things. Love God. Love people. You do those, you're operating in God's kingdom. You are living into the kingdom dream of Jesus, of right now. So let's not overcomplicate it. Let's not put these barriers on people, these laws, these restrictions, these hoops they gotta jump through. Let's not make it into this thing. It's like we've been invited to this beautiful party. We can't believe our mind is blown. We're standing at this party. It's fantastic. The best cocktails you've ever had, hors d'oeuvres, food, your favorite food, the desserts are off the chain. The music your favorite people. You get invited in, you're here. Your mind is freaking blown. And then after a few minutes of being there, you turn around and you start locking up the doors. You start taking back the invitations. You start making people sign contracts to enter. You start making'em jump through all these hoops and agree to all these things. One, it's not your party. You don't get to be at the door. Telling people who gets in and who gets out, everybody gets in. But why don't we join Jesus in the beautiful message and stand at the door and say, Hey, the party's here. You need to get in here, man. You need to get over here. This is the way, this is the journey. This is the life. Let's not be guards at a party that we have free admission to, freely invited to where we stand at the door and refuse to let others in. That's nasty. And here's the most crazy part about all of this. It's like the easiest place for evil to hide is to wrap itself up as good. And I'm convinced that it's happening all over our country, all over our churches. Evil is real and it hides best when it wraps itself up as good religion because it's hard to spot because we've heard it so much. It just goes down easy. I'm telling you, Jesus. The way of Jesus is different than the way of religion. It's all over Scripture. Jesus has says it over and over and over, everybody's included. He's not put out or overwhelmed by anyone's sin. He offers grace. He offers forgiveness, but he has this line where he does get tough, where he will bring harsh truth and you know who it is. You know what that line is. You know who it's for. It's for the religious people, the people that think they got it all in the bag that they've earned it. Right. They say the right prayers, they give the right amount of money, they check the right boxes. They serve in the right ministries. They're listening to the right music. They support the right artists. They vote for the right party, whatever it is. It's like that stuff. I don't know. We're checking that boxes if that's the stuff that matters. I'm, I'm trying to say, I don't think that stuff matters nearly as much as showing up and loving people. So great. You got an A on an exam. It's like going, it's like being in algebra class. Imagine you're in algebra in high school and you've practiced practice, practice, practice, practice so much. You're ancient Italian literature and you show up and guess what you, you're great at Italian literature. You've been studying and practicing the living into that for a long time, but the test is freaking algebra the test, so to speak. It's not even the test. The invitation is a better word for it is love. Jesus Scripture says, you'll be known by your love the way you love one another. And right now Christians are pretty poor at that pretty. Poor. So I'm inviting you in. I'm not here to condemn you. I'm not here to make you feel bad. I'm inviting you into something so much better. It is so much richer and better than you could ever dream. It's a better story. It's a bigger story. It'll make you feel alive in a way that you've never understood. It'll connect you with God in a way you've never understood, to know that you have always been and will always be part of that family, God's family. You've never been excluded and you've never been separate. Once you realize that all the pressure of all this religious stuff just falls away and you can live into your natural, God created self and you can be free to love others. That's the invitation. That's what I've been chewing on. Thanks for listening. And uh, as always, if you're interested, I would love to hear some feedback. I'd love to chat with you. Also Brooks, a LSO brooks@gmail.com is my email. Feel free to send over a note, um, and let me know what you're thinking. Thanks for listening. Catch you next time.