Unemployed

I am officially unemployed as of two days ago, Friday the 16th. Now it's off to Mexico to be a bonafide beach bum and take part in Kevin and Ashley's wedding. Rough life, I know.

I was reminded again of how Jesus came to completely reshape the way we view religion and rules and God. In Luke 6.6ff Jesus is teaching on the Sabbath and some of the Pharisees come up to him to see if he is going to heal a man on the Sabbath. They want to catch Jesus disobeying the law that they believed was all important. If Jesus healed the man, then they could accuse him of disobeying God's law and not being true to His commands. In their mind, religion was about obeying the letter of the law. However, just like Jesus does all throughout the sermon on the mount and throughout other Scripture, he completely changes the premise of the accusation and cuts to the heart of the issue. Jesus asks them: Is it better to do good and give life, or to destroy it? The Pharisees could not answer because they knew they had been trapped. You see, according to the strict Pharisaical interpretation of the law was that you couldn't do any kind of "work" on the Sabbath and therefore Jesus would be disobedient if he healed someone. But Jesus reframes the whole issue by getting to the heart: does God want us to do good and give life, or be apathetic and destroy life? Obeying Sabbath laws are not the end; loving God (and, consequently, loving others) is the end. Jesus doesn't want us to follow a bunch of rules. He set us free from them. He wants us to live in the incredible freedom of his forgiveness and be free to love God (and others) with all that we are. We are set free from legalistic living!