Of the over 6 billion people on Earth right now, about 2.2 billion people called themselves Christians. About 2.2 billion people would check the Religious Affiliation Box of Christian. The irony of it all is the fact that Jesus never came to start a religion...He came to start a revolution! Tragically, we see more suits and ties calling themselves Christians living in agreement with a Jesus holding a lamb picture, than we see calloused hands and broken hearts living in accordance with a Jesus that came to revolutionize the souls of the people that He created. The fact is, "Christianity" as a religion is tame, boring, non-satisfying, and is passionate only when traditions are in danger of being changed. "Christ-Following" as a revolution is primal, raw, savage, and is passionate in terms of being a part of seeing God change lives...no matter the cost, discomfort, or pain. A true Christ-Following Revolutionary would rather die in the mere pursuit of seeing God bring about revolution in the lives of men, women, and children than live in the midst of the status-quo...a religious "Christian" is most interested in maintaining and arguing for what once was, content in bubble-living.
As a whole, I believe that many in the church approach the Book of James as a "Oh, that will step on some toes" type of book. I, however, am under the impression that the Book of James is about an all-out assault on everything "religious" in nature...it is not interested in "stepping on toes," it is (if you open yourself to it) about crushing the weekly games that we play in the name of "being a good Christian."
To understand the Book of James, we have to understand the backdrop of the book. It was written by the half-brother of Jesus (Jesus also had a half-brother named Judas, which I'm guessing Mary and Joseph later regretted that name choice) according to Mark 6:3. James, like his other brothers and sisters, did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God (can you imagine growing up being the younger sibling of Jesus? Why can't you be more like Jesus? Well, mom, why can't you be more like Jesus?), according to John 7:5, until after Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. And James became the overseer of the church in Jerusalem after the Holy Spirit came and set over 3,000 people's souls on fire with purpose and meaning in life after just one sermon, and daily after that (not because a new religion had just been birthed) because people actually spread the revolution that had happened to them. James had obviously rejected the religion that some wanted to attach to Jesus...what he could not reject was the revolution that following the risen Jesus brought to his life, heart, soul, and framework in which he now saw life. But, this is only half of the backdrop! For those not acquainted with the historical fact, the Jews and the Romans did not play "nice" together. As a matter of fact, one of Jesus' disciples, Simon, was known as being a zealot (translation: a dude that wore a coon-skin cap and had stock piles of shotgun shells and beanie-weenies in his basement) who thought that Jesus came to overthrown the Roman Empire. Tensions over taxation and mistreatment of the Jews by the Romans continued to mount after Jesus' ascension back into Heaven. In 66AD, war officially broke out to kickoff the Jewish-Roman War (66-70AD) which resulted in the destruction of the Jewish Temple (now the modern-day sight of The Dome of the Rock...Islam, not the wrestler) in 70AD by the Romans. All this to say, the political backdrop of the Book of James was revolution. James' book was not an attempt to suppress revolution...James' book is a guide defining soul revolution...not a call to arms, but rather a call to truly live.
Over the next posts, we are going to walk through the Book of James to discover the Revolution that Jesus wants to incite in our own lives in order that our lives, through Him, may set the lives of those around us aflame with passion and purpose...look forward to the journey!
No comments:
Post a Comment