Why I Choose to Follow Jesus

I don’t have any compelling introductory paragraph to offer. I figure the title kind of speaks for itself, so let’s dive straight in:

Why do I choose to follow Jesus?

Well, let’s start this thought exercise at the gym…

One of the joys of working out at a gym is that there are tons of television screens on every wall, each one tuned to something different. It’s like a cornucopia of what’s happening in the world at that particular moment in time – we get politics, sports, movies, sitcoms, financial news; it’s great. Somewhat overwhelming and slightly overstimulating, but still – a great way to get caught up without having to spend extra money on a newspaper.

What’s interesting is not so much the content on the screens, but the questions they’re asking behind the messaging:

Whom can you trust to lead well?

Are we safe?

How can I secure my future (as well as my present)?

Is there joy and laughter to be found in the middle of the crazy?

Aren’t these the questions humanity has been asking since the beginning?

I’d add some even more poignant questions that seem to drive the above narratives:

Am I loved?

Do people notice me?

What is my truest self and how can I best express that to others?

Do I belong?

As I look around, these seem to be the questions we’re all asking – of ourselves, of our leaders, of the world around us.

And so, enter Jesus.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: we are all hardwired to submit to authority, and because of that, we’re all looking for a trustworthy, good authority to submit to.

I know – the thought of submitting to an authority strikes many of us as nothing short of a personal hell, especially with our societal emphasis on individualism, but hang with me for a minute.

One of the most basic examples of submitting to authority would be the timeless battle of man v. nature. From the very beginning, we have been dependent on the sun rising in the morning, setting in the evening, and providing heat and light in between. Then there are the weather patterns our ancestors had to rely on: when it rained, we got crops; if it didn’t rain, we didn’t eat.

These things (the sun and the rain) are things we humans simply cannot control. They happen independent of us. We have no choice but to submit to them. This awareness is hard-wired into our very DNA.

Now – we make our lives easier by developing electricity and light, air conditioners and irrigation, all of which have helped move humanity forward in immeasurable ways. But one of the subtleties that we may miss here is that with these developments, we convey the delicate message that we are the ones in charge – not nature.

Which works for a little while, but then more nature gets in the way, making our lives more inconvenient, less comfortable, and so we go back to the drawing board looking for answers to our problems.

I applaud technological advancements – I am so incredibly grateful for all of them.

But cut off our power or water supply, and we find out just how vulnerable we all are.

Because at the end of the day, the day ends whether we want it to or not. The sun rises, the sun sets – it is an uncontrollable reality of our world; an authority that we have no choice but to submit to.

So, what does this have to do with Jesus?

Well, the more we believe the subtleties that we are the ones in control, the more we act like gods.  

And isn’t that the promise that got Eve to take a bite in the first place? Your eyes will be opened, and you will become like gods…

And one look at those TVs in the gym will not take much to convince us that we make terrible gods…

Whom can you trust to lead well?

Are we safe?

How can I secure my future (as well as my present)?

Is there joy and laughter to be found in the middle of the crazy?

Now, let’s go back to Eve for a second. What does scripture say is the primary result of that fateful bite? Well, to answer that we have to look at the description of life before the snack in the middle of the garden:

Adam and Eve were naked, and they felt no shame.

Of all the things the author could have written about life in Eden, the main descriptor is that they felt no shame.

What, then, is the result of taking the fruit?

Shame.

The message of shame is basically one that tells you something is wrong with you at your core. It causes you to ask questions like:

Am I loved?

Do people notice me?

What is my truest self and how can I best express that to others?

Do I belong?

Now – for those of you who don’t believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, can we at least agree that at a heart level, this stuff is pretty darn accurate as it relates to our human condition?

And if it’s pretty darn accurate as it relates to our human condition, maybe we can give it some element of credibility in the argument, right?

So… What does this have to do with Jesus???

The Bible says that Jesus came to restore the condition of Eden. And what was that condition? One without shame.

When Jesus died on the cross, the Bible says that Jesus scorned its shame…for our freedom.

So, whether you believe the Bible is the inspired word of God or not, can we agree that:

1.     Our hearts’ biggest desire is to be known, to be accepted, to be free of shame and

2.     The possibility that Jesus came to restore us to our pre-shame state sounds pretty dang good and

3.     Our current societal state is one where we have rejected the authority of Jesus and we chase after our own gods (with some degree of success that ultimately ends in higher degrees of disarray)

So why do I choose to follow Jesus?

I look around and notice that we make terrible gods. My heart is hard-wired to submit to something greater than me, and the rise and setting of the sun reminds me of that daily. My heart yearns to know that I am loved and that I belong, and so the thought of Someone offering me an answer to that question sounds like water to a thirsty soul.

And so the more I’ve tried on Jesus over the course of my life, the more loved I feel, the more seen I feel by him, the more I discover my truest self (the one he sees and invites me into – not the one I think I know), and the more I am convinced that I belong.

And that’s a leader I can trust; one with whom I feel safe; one who secures my present and my future – oh and one who, because of these things, brings me so much joy in the deep places that I can’t envision any other way.

Because to reject Jesus is to reject all of those things.

And my heart simply cannot survive devoid of that.

That is why I choose to follow Jesus.