A Selfish Faith?

A couple of years back I was teaching scripture in high schools. This was a great but challenging role that led me to really search for what the Bible taught rather than what I thought it taught (as I taught what I was taught rather than learning and checking things for myself). One of my students stumped me one day, and what he said has never left my mind. When asked why people would want to be a 'Christian', he responded with: 'because they are selfish'. I was confused!?!? Christians... selfish... but they give to the poor, they do mission work... I was taking time out of my own schedule to teach these kids and they call me selfish?!?!? How so?

I asked him why he thought that and he told me that Christians are selfish because they choose to believe so that they can live forever; so they can have the riches of heaven. I had never viewed it in that manner. I was stumped as to how to respond, because in some respect it is true.

Upon doing some in-depth study of the Old Testament it became evident that the OT characters did not have the same beliefs as modern day Christians. They did not preach the 'Jesus loves you', 'get into heaven', 'avoid hell' gospel.

I have thought about this long and hard and observed Christians at a distance to determine the basis of their belief. I have to put it to them, Christianity and the church is the greatest marketing group of all time. They offer unconditional love, eternal life, forgiveness from all wrong actions and thoughts. They provide Easter and Christmas - two of the days looked forward to all year round by majority of the western world. They have extreme wealth in the property owned as well as a gift in crying poor to gain money off the followers. They own much of western history in their churches and museums. The Catholic church owns a whole city. They own one day a week. They are known worldwide and have countless people giving their time and energy to them for free. With all that, if they were not the world's largest organization there would be problems. But is this the gathering of believers that the Bible exhibits... or have we created something else?

It is interesting, being outside the 'church' (but still a strong believer) just how much people evangelize to you. I like to take note of the manner in which they approach it. Most tell of the love that Jesus has for us. Some go with the gospel of guilt starting with 'you are a sinner - but there is forgiveness', others go down the path of prosperity - that is heavens riches and a life of blessings now.

How often have you yourself heard that Jesus or God loves you, that He is waiting to hear from you, that the devil is out to get you? How often do we pray for our illnesses, our jobs, our safety? Not that there is anything wrong with this at all. In fact the Bible states to cast our cares on Him. But what I wonder is that if we did not have the exhibition of love shown through the Messiah's life, death and resurrection... would we still worship God? If we were not told of life after death... would we believe?

I guess the point I am trying to make here is: do we believe and follow God because He is God or because of what He did for US? Is our worship based on who He is or what we get?

I love that in Hebrews it speaks of the heroes of faith from the Old Testament who worshiped God regardless of reward... in some cases without any promise or sign of reward, but simply because God is God. I think it is important that instead of focusing on ourselves, we learn who He is. If you believe Him to be real, then He should be followed, obeyed, loved and feared regardless of the gifts He gives. I want to challenge people to find out who the God was that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah and the others worshiped. Then we will appreciate even greater the  gifts given in the New Testament.