Hard Enough Already: Following Jesus in the 21st Century

If you grew up in a thoroughly Christian environment, as I did, then you never really questioned the validity of Christianity. You assumed it was true because… well, it was just true. It was what we have been taught from childhood. If I struggled with faith at all, it was not the struggle about what to believe or whether to believe. It was the struggle about how seriously to take what I believed, and how seriously and even sacrificially would I follow Jesus. For me, it was a struggle to “accept Jesus” as truly LORD of my life, not whether to believe or disbelieve in Jesus. I have no memory of not believing in Jesus.
The critical issues concerning the authenticity and validity of the Bible and belief in the resurrection of Jesus only became intellectual issues much later in my life, after I had been following Jesus as my LORD for quite a long time. I had based my life on something I assumed to be true. It was later that I began to seriously examine the validity and authenticity of what I had been taught from childhood.
Think about people from other parts of the world who grew up with totally different cultural assumptions than we have. Think about those who grew up Hindu in India, or Sunni Muslim in Saudi Arabia, or Shiite Muslim in Iran, or completely secular without religious faith of any kind in the atheistic former Soviet Union. They have the same deep-seated assumptions about their inherited worldview as we have about ours. What a dilemma we all face when confronted with the seriousness of the Truth claims of Christianity.
How Christianity and Jesus are presented and understood is crucially important. What must anyone believe about Jesus in order to follow him faithfully? The Truth claims of Christianity revolve around the deity of Jesus and the validity of the Bible. That makes the quest for the authentic Jesus as presented in the New Testament a serious matter. Who was he? What did he teach? How reliable is the biblical record? What does it mean to “accept Jesus” and become one of his followers?
I use the words “authentic Jesus” for two reasons. First, there are non-authentic versions of Jesus in the public domain passing themselves off as authentic. Secondly, the authentic Jesus is a composite of several valid and valuable ways of understanding Jesus. That is not simple or easy to explain, much less accept and believe. But I will attempt to add to that understanding in this discourse.
This brief volume is not likely to add much to the long history of trying to understand Jesus and his teachings. However, the process of studying and discussing the teachings of Jesus in the fellowship of other believers and followers has proven to be beneficial for two millennia. Hopefully, this volume will provide that opportunity for you.
Notice that I said a fellowship of believers and followers. There is an important distinction. Not everyone who believes, follows. Not everyone who follows Jesus believes the same things about Jesus. Make no mistake about this: The Sermon on the Mount is about following Jesus! Not just believing in Him.
The people who first heard these words from the lips of Jesus were not believers in the same way we use the term today! They were not Christians. They were thoroughly Jewish. They were primarily potential followers of Jesus; and Jesus to them was an itinerant rabbi and healer they hoped was the Jewish Messiah. They did not anticipate he would be crucified, much less resurrected. The phenomenal events on the Day of Pentecost had not yet birthed the church. Jesus was only just beginning to introduce to these eager first listeners the radical concept of God as our Heavenly Father.
These first listeners were hearing a message from Jesus about God that they had never heard before. Jesus was challenging all their previous beliefs and assumptions about God. Could they trust Jesus enough to follow him? He had already called his first disciples with life changing words like these: Leave your nets. Leave your tax table. Leave your previous way of life. Follow me. I will teach you a new way of life. I will teach you how to fish for people. The message was all about following Jesus, not believing perplexing theology about the Incarnate Son of God. The message of Jesus was very different from what is usually preached and taught in today’s churches.
Perhaps it is time to ask some important questions. Are we followers of Jesus or just believers in Jesus? Is it possible to be a Christian, believing all the right things about Jesus, and yet not be a faithful follower of Jesus’s teachings? Is it possible to follow Jesus faithfully, and yet not believe all the difficult unproveable precepts of Christianity? Which is more important: believing or following? Are following and believing the same thing or different things? Should they be?