Waiter: "Which type of pasta would you like?"
Me: "Does it matter?"
Waiter: (looks around, leans in) "No, not really."
Sometimes people think this to be true of God... that you can pick any faith or religious figure to follow and you'll end up in the same place.
Unfortunately, the same can be true even when you're living within the truth of who God is. It's easy for people to assume that you can pick any form of Christianity to follow, whether you're more conservative or liberal, and it's all legit.
The truth is there is only one form of Christianity - Jesus lived it, and we can't... yet we're invited to.
How does that happen, then? How can we do something that we can't do?
I like this quote from Peter Kreeft as insight:
“Christ changed every human being he ever met…. If anyone claims to have met him without being changed, he has not met him at all. When you touch him, you touch lightning…. I think Jesus is the only man in history who never bored anyone. I think this is an empirical fact, not just a truth of faith. It’s one of the reasons for believing his central claim, and Christianity’s central claim, that he is literally God in the flesh…. The Greek word used to describe everyone’s reaction to him in the Gospels is thauma— wonder. This was true of his enemies, who killed him. Of his disciples, who worshipped him. And even of agnostics, who went away shaking their heads and muttering ‘No man every spoke like this man’ and knowing that if he didn’t stop being what he was and saying what he said that eventually they would have to side with either his killers or his worshippers. For ‘Jesus shock’ breaks your heart in two and forces you to choose which half of your heart you will follow….”Is your faith like pasta...
or is it like lightning?
