Demonstrative Discipleship

Now we all know that Jesus became flesh as a child in Bethlehem, that he grew to be a man where he spent time teaching and performing miracles before he fulfilled his purpose of coming by dying on the cross for our sins. Now all of this is so amazing on its own that it is hard to comprehend let alone move past onto other things, but as I have recently learned there is more.

One of the things we as Christians like to almost brag about is the fact that Christianity is not a religion (in the religious sense though it is in the academic sense) but instead a relationship with your creator. Which is true, God is always presenting himself as a personal God who loves all of us his children. The thing is that God is to be our Father and our relationship with him is then supposed to be similar to a good father-child relationship.

When I look back on my life and the choices I made and the personality traits that I have. I notice something profound, or not so profound depending on how you look at it. I noticed that many of the things that I do right were things that my parents do right and many of the things that I have struggled with were almost inherited from my parents, I still made the choices to do the things I did but to my credit (and everyone else who makes mistakes) I didn’t know any better. I did what I knew how to do from observing my father and mother, though I did it mostly subconsciously. How they handled situations I handled situations and even if I hated it when my parents did it I still did it myself. This was partly because I didn’t make the connection as to why I was doing it. In my head it was just the way to handle things though if I saw someone else doing it I would have known they were wrong. And looking back it was at times like this that I am so thankful for Jesus words on the cross regarding his murderers he says "forgive them Father for they know not what they do." And similarly the area’s in which my parents excelled I also excelled but subconsciously became prideful about them not knowing that I did them only because I had been shown how to by my parents. Now many of these things in which I followed my parents example I did have information which in a way talked about a better way to handle situations but I didn’t believe it, I had never seen it so how could I believe it would work. So it seems that a big part of the reason we do the things we do and handle situations the way we do it would seems is because of what was demonstrated to us and mostly through parents or at least parental figure-type people. It is important to note that this doesn’t let us off the hook because we were just doing what was demonstrated to us because we can and do often times do better than our parents and we do in fact know that what we are doing is wrong. Its also true that it works the other way too just because our parents provide a good demonstration for us that doesn’t take away from us, we’ve still done a good thing, we still could have chosen to handle the situation a different way. The point is not that everything we do depends on what was demonstrated but instead that when you’ve seen how a matter ought to be handled you have much more likely to handle a similar situation correctly yourself.

So if God is our Heavenly Father as the bible claims he is then you would think he would also know this especially since he’s the one who taught it to me, and I think he does. And it seems to me that this is one of the biggest reasons he sent his son, a piece of himself in fact, his heart, to live a perfect life and die on the cross and in so doing to suffer perfectly. Jesus spent three years living with his disciples for what reason? So they could hear more of his speaking than everyone else? So they could see more of his miracles and as a result have more faith in him? Maybe I suppose these things played into why but I think a huge part of the reason, as I am sure you have already guessed, is that he could demonstrate to them how they ought to live through his life, that they might see his life and have more faith having seen it done right. Also so that he could reprove them when they handled a situation or desired to handle a situation incorrectly and remind them or show them how to handle it. It all centers around that idea of the relationship of the Father-Child relationship that we have with God. But this essay is not just about Jesus. Its about you and its about me. Its about finding people who we can learn by their demonstration how we ought to live and follow Jesus today. Its about showing others through our lives how to live and how to follow Jesus better. Its really about discipleship.