Faith in Jesus: The One True Test

There is no shortage of people who claim to have faith in Jesus.

Many praise him.

Worship him.

Claim to believe in him.

And to trust in him.

Athletes around the world will grace sporting fields with Jesus’ name written on arms, dedicating worldly feats to a man who said no worldly anything should be placed before our duty to honour God – or life - by following his example.

Religions have been built upon faith and trust in Jesus.

And Christian and Catholic schools and universities around the world claim that same faith as their foundation.

No, there is no shortage when it comes to people, and religious and institutional entities, claiming not only to have faith in Jesus, but basing their very existence and reason for being on this faith.

And yet, apart from living like him, there is a single test that defines whether one truly does believe in Jesus, and, by default, believes in God.

And perfectly, in a world that values noise over substance, those who claim to believe in Jesus and are alive today, get to sit that test.

Already, many have failed it, but this hasn’t stopped them continuing to practice the ‘I or we believe in Jesus’ praise and worship aspect of their ‘faith’.

Or maintaining their allegiance to a definition of ‘God’ that no longer exists, and which, given the direct testimony of God, never existed in the first place.

These are the exploitable aspects of faith in Jesus. The ones that suit us and provide worldly benefits.

They keep us comfortable, purposeful and relevant in the eyes of the world.

They give us something to crow about to the world - which we crow after having placed our feet on the shoulders of Jesus.

All to impress the world.

Yes, that same world Jesus said must be rejected if one is to truly believe in him.

And trust in him.

Believing and trusting in Jesus comes down to one thing.

That’s if one is to make their faith in Jesus complete – and not keep him imprisoned in the worldly form of an idea that can be desecrated and exploited just as God has been.

This test is particularly relevant for the loud and proud advocates of Jesus.

And those who have weaponised Jesus through their self-righteous attacks against the flawed and broken humanity of others.

Such as those on the Medium writing platform who will gladly educate the world on what it takes to believe, follow and trust in Jesus by showcasing the depth of their knowledge and faith to the cheers and claps of their adoring fans.

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All while highlighting the failures of others, as if they are theirs to highlight.

They will often ask of their audience, ‘Do YOU follow Jesus?’

Putting the faith of others to the acid test – as if it is their place to do so.

And as if their faith is the benchmark for what it means to be truly faithful.

This test is also relevant to the worldly entities and institutions who have built themselves – and in some cases their fortune - on the notion of having faith in Jesus, and on Jesus himself being the living Word of God.

Now, for anyone reading this, there is no point going further unless you can get your head around the absolute truth that is to follow.

It is real.

This is not a creative piece designed to entertain. Nor is it an opinion piece.

It is a statement of facts.

There is one thing in my life I would never do on purpose –or even risk doing - and that is misrepresent Jesus or God by publicly express assumptions and ideas about God I might have formed myself.

I have no desire to educate the world on my personal take on God when God has been representing himself since the beginning of time with the simplicity and clarity a child could grasp.

Nor do I seek to do the same when it comes to the role Jesus has in establishing God’s Word here on earth.

What follows is factual and real.

It is the only test of faith in Jesus, apart from our being like him, that ever mattered.

The moment where our individual faiths will either be etched into history as a faith of substance.

Or one that was shallow and impotent.

A faith that never really existed, because when it mattered most, it went missing. Because the faith such a person claimed to have in Jesus was never real in the first place.

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It was in themselves.

Or in an idea.

An admirable one perhaps, but not one that was ever going to embrace the idea behind that faith, when it made itself real.

You see, God making himself tangible and real – a being that can be identified precisely - and doing so in the exact manner Jesus predicted changes everything.

Our understanding of existence is flipped on its head.

It establishes who God is.

And validates who Jesus said he was.

And the world we have built must be redefined and measured from God’s perspective. Not from our own perspectives on God.

And not on what we thought ‘the world’ was.

When it comes to believing in Jesus, any public announcement that has been made since he lived, explaining or defining God - in relation to his existence and what he may or may not be, or any comment where someone says ‘God is this’ or ‘God is that’ - is representative of a lack of faith in Jesus.

And if one believes Jesus was the true embodiment of God’s Word, then such statements also become a rejection of God.

The same can be said of expressions where one might say ‘God means this’ or ‘God means that’.

Understanding what God said or why he said it can only be understood from God’s perspective.

And, unless we are God, if we assume anything for ourselves and then express those assumptions publicly, we are misrepresenting God.

While embodying a lack of faith in Jesus.

Neither God nor Jesus spoke in riddles.

They needed their message to be clear.

To say, ‘No, that’s not what Jesus meant when he said that - he really meant this’ is an assumption one understands Jesus better than himself.

It is also a great way for someone to say, ‘No, Jesus was not communicating that message clearly. He really meant what I am about to tell you he meant. When it comes to understanding Jesus, you shouldn’t listen toJesus, you should listen to me.’

Jesus did not value worldly desires such as the desire to sound smart. Or to make an impression in the world.

He believed in communicating his message clearly.

If you are telling the world ‘You need to emulate me or you are going to be in big trouble’, you need to make that message clear.

When the matter of following Jesus was as grave as he made it out to be, it becomes important that he delivers this message with clarity.

Not in a manner that is abstract, cryptic or confusing.

Jesus wasn’t giving us a puzzle.

He was telling us what God expected of us if we weren’t to be found guilty of the non-consensual abuse of God.

Which we now know translates literally to the non-consensual abuse of life.

To begin with, anyone believing in the historical notion of God has already made real their rejection of Jesus, proving their faith in him was an empty one.

Jesus, as his death loomed, handed down to his followers one of the most important messages he would ever deliver.

He asked for their watchfulness.

To be watchful for a time when God, through a promised helper, would reveal his true nature to the world.

This would be the moment of revelation.

The moment God spoke for himself, telling the world, ‘This is who I am.’

To embrace any definition of God the world had to offer before this moment, or to believe in an idea of God that was arrived at by a religious entity or institution, required one to reject the Word of Jesus when it came to God’s revelation.

Jesus said we should be watchful and prepared for a time when God himself would reveal his true nature to the world.

Preparing for this moment required any true follower of Jesus to put aside any personal perspectives they had on God to make space for God's perspective on himself.

When a religious group gathers to declare, ‘I believe this or that about God…’, they are rejecting Jesus.

Jesus asked two things of his followers.

‘Be’ like me.

‘And trust’ in my promise of God’s revelation.

In fact, it was these three words, ‘be and trust’, repeated three times over, which heralded the beginning of God’s revelation.

What did we need to know?

The only thing we ever needed to know.

‘Be and trust.’

‘Be and trust.’

‘Be and trust.’

‘Be’ what God has asked us to be as embodied and exemplified by Jesus, and ‘trust’ in God’s revelation.

Not the worldly assumptions people make of God so they can be perceived as smart and insightful.

If anyone said to a true follower of Jesus, ‘this is what God is’, or 'let me explain God to you', they would reply, ‘it is not in you that I trust. It is in Jesus. God will reveal himself to the world. God will reveal his true nature, and it is in that revelation I will believe. It is that time in history for which I remain watchful and prepared. I have no faith in your self-serving noise. I will not believe in your idea of God, for Jesus said that one day your idea is going to become a false god.’

Jesus told his followers to prepare for a day when all that came before would be proven wrong by God’s own testimony.

One thing a true follower of Jesus would never do is attempt to influence collective human thought with their own idea or notion of what God might be.

This could only establish them and their idea as a competitor of God.

In fact, when confronted with someone’s idea of God, they would reject it flatly.

That’s if they are a true believer of Jesus.

I say true believer, for to believe in some of the things Jesus said, while rejecting others, is not the mark of a true believer.

This is a rejection of Jesus, and if they believe Jesus to be the living Word of God, it is also a rejection of God.

It could be argued, with evidence provided by God, that the Christian religions themselves are a rejection of Jesus – even though they have founded themselves in his name.

A follower of Jesus would reject any notion of God that was not clearly established by God himself.

This is one of the foundational principles of becoming a true follower of Jesus. To be watchful and prepared for God’s revelation.

Not embrace, create or consolidate the self-serving noise and intellectual notions of God that his own revelation would have to compete with.

To put forward our own ideas about God, or to invest in the worldly ones on offer, is to make God’s job of reaching the ears of the worldly even more difficult.

The ‘faithful’ become the obstacle to his Word when they should have been ready to embrace and support it.

They become the adversary to the prophecy of Jesus. Even though they might lay claim to being a follower.

In our contemporary world this rejection of Jesus by the ‘followers’ of Jesus has become a huge problem for God.

For his revelation and testimony to the world as to his true nature took place exactly as Jesus said it would.

Through a helper who spoke on behalf of God.

I am that helper.

Anyone consolidating the notion that God is incorporeal – not of substance or separate from the life we belong to – is misrepresenting God.

And it is a harmful misrepresentation at that.

There is an irreconcilable difference between an identity who exists in separation to the life our world exploits and abuses, and one who says, ‘I am that life!’

Or ‘I am the life!’

As God has frequently stated.

Along with his first statement as to his true nature and identity, ‘you are the cells of my body!’

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The God of the Abrahamic religions annot be harmed.

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The God of revelation - the God Jesus served - can!

But God has not been believed, because Jesus has not been believed.

The world that abuses God does not want God speaking for himself because it puts an end to our capacity to exploit God - the God who is life - through our own ideas and misrepresentations of him.

Ideas and misrepresentations that Jesus said should be rejected in the first place.

And yet these are the notions of God our world clings to while it continues to inflict a torrent of physical, energetic and psychological harm on the life that belongs to God.

The life that is ‘all that is, seen and unseen!’

No, God and Jesus did not speak in riddles.

They did not need us to be smart to understand them. They needed understanding them to be simple.

Because it was always God’s life at stake.

And because that is how it works when one is trying to establish consent.

Pope Francis, in his recent advent addresses, has pointed to the fact that it is his greatest fear that he would miss the return of God’s Word.

And yet, he already has.

He and his church are years behind.

This is not new.

God’s own testimony and revelation has been living and breathing in our world for some time.

Just as Jesus said it would come to live and breathe.

But the world did not believe in Jesus.

It praises him and exploits him.

But it did not believe in him.

For to believe in Jesus, requires one to believe in him.

And to believe in God’s revelation one must also trust in and believe in Jesus’ version of how that would happen.

Not in the worldly voices that claim to know both Jesus and God better than they know themselves.

God’s revelation has happened.

And it happened just as Jesus said it would.

There is great irony in the fact that to reject conditional expression and the contemporary Word of God, Christians will also have to reject the Word and prophecies of Jesus.

This has become the great contemporary Christian dilemma.

To keep their own authority when it comes to God – individuals and religious institutions must reject God.

And Jesus.

And to keep alive a religious ‘faith’ meant to be founded upon a belief in Jesus, they must reject him.

I said at the start of this piece that what followed was founded in absolute truth.

God’s revelation has been made real by God himself.

God’s revelation has been made real by his own testimony.

Rejected or otherwise, it has happened.

Exactly as Jesus said it would.

Today, among Jesus’ greatest adversaries are those who have built a life claiming to believe in him.

And his rejection, which is God’s rejection, continues to come at a huge cost to God.

And so it is.

Amen

Postscript

In the evening of the day on which I wrote this piece I took a quiet moment in contemplation.

During that time, God referred to those who misrepresent him, those who speak for themselves on his behalf and those who plug the world full of their own explanations and assumptions about him, as ‘God Robbers’.

They are robbing him of his right to speak for himself, and they are stealing the time and space that should be his to do so.

They are also stealing the ears of those who claim to honour God, but who, in reality, offer their faith and attention to the worldly misrepresentations of those who claim to love God.

Those who live with conditional expression seek nothing from God. Only to be what God has asked us to be.

Religions who claim to represent God are also ‘God Robbers’.

They are claiming sovereignty over God at the same time he is claiming sovereignty over all life - because it is his life we belong to.

God’s Word places all religions and the world itself at his feet.

But the ‘faithful’ – the ‘God Robbers’ – who represent God and claim authority from him, place themselves on God’s shoulders, so the world that abuses God can witness the glory they have stolen in his name.

In doing so, they use a faith that does not exist to exploit and compete with the true Word and testimony of God.

And this will be their legacy.

They will forever be known, in God’s own words, as ‘God Robbers’.

People who stole from and exploited God, so they could cash in on the worldly treasures that came with their thefts and exploitations.

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‍‘God Robbers’ who robbed God of the right to represent himself.
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Of his right to sovereignty over his own life.

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And of the ears of those who belong to him.

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They entrenched an idea of God in collective thought that not only was God always going to render obsolete, but was going to make God’s revelation more difficult.

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Even though Jesus warned against these behaviours.

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But that’s what happens when God is reduced to an idea that people use to profit from and impress the eyes of the world that God has condemned as his great historical abuser.

And so it is.

Amen

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