Everyday Challenges
The first Commandment asks the believer to worship God's glory at all times, i.e., with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength possible. The Christian prays to God directly to admit submission to God, to confess sins already committed, to ask Him forgiveness for those sins, and to seek help from God to proceed through the challenges of secular life without further sinning. Does God answer prayers, especially the requests for His help to avoid sin? Jesus says God does. But how He does is always mysterious. After all, God wants a Christian to use his free will to find and believe the teachings of Jesus as a matter of spiritual faith. If God consistently and dependably answered prayers in supernatural ways, it would be too easy to believe, there would be no challenge of maintaining faith, and free will would no longer exist.
Worshipping God does not mean using prayer to seek help for small and trivial secular challenges. Should anyone ask God to help a certain sports team win a game? Should a Christian sit around waiting for God to find him employment? Worshipping God means respecting his vast powers. Becoming emotionally dependent on a hope for His supernatural intervention to solve secular problems is not respectful. To God, secular life has no use except as it can provide opportunity to obey the Commandments. Everyday life should be full of quiet, solitary prayers that are meaningful to His worship. God welcomes Christians to interrupt what they are doing in their secular life and focus on the relationship they have with Him as often as possible.
The second Commandment asks Christians to treat others as they would want to be treated. While this Commandment may be easy to apply to others who are naturally lovable, such as children, parents, spouses, siblings, and friends, it is not so easy to apply to all strangers, especially enemies. Yet Jesus clearly died for the sins of all men and He asks for caring applied to all of them. Caring for others will involve giving up accumulated wealth. The internal dilemma is to determine how much and in what form. Giving away material wealth is perhaps the easiest. It is easy to write a bank check to a charitable organization. But giving away emotional and intellectual wealth is different. These probably require interaction with strangers. The Christian has to step out of his comfort zone and spend time and effort with someone who is in need of emotional support or needs teaching. This costs time away from his loved ones to give attention to a stranger who has a need. Maybe it is a child who has lost one or both parents and craves emotional support at this stage of life. Maybe it is someone who needs some technical help from an expert to finish a task. The Christian has a conscience that alerts him when these opportunities have come along and it tugs at his heart to spend some wealth on them. If the Christian ignores his conscience and lets the good opportunities pass, then guilt will hurt him emotionally. It may not have hurt before being "reborn," but now it will. The guilt is really a sin of omission in this case. A Christian becomes more at ease over time with his conscience and becomes less sinful. He will show more and more "good works" as evidence of his growing Christian spirit. The greater the Christian's wealth, the greater the challenge to give it to others. Jesus warned of this when He said that it is easier for a camel to pass the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter God's Kingdom.
In everyday life, there will be moments of success and happiness. We naturally enjoy them as the results of our hard work or smart thinking. These "I" moments, such as "I worked hard and got a promotion," or "I am really enjoying this new car," or "I just earned my college degree after lots of hard work," or "I am so lucky to have this child in my life," are special happy moments that are blessings of God. A Christian suppresses any feelings of achievement or pride in having responsibility for such good outcomes. A Christian quietly thanks God for them in a submissive way. Anything having to do with "I," "me," or "my" is self-centered and inward looking. Christianity is the pursuit of thinking and doing the things that are outward to glorify the Creator and to help those He created.
Satisfying individual needs drives the competition for jobs, for love, and for attention. Societies have found that competition is good because it spurs more efficient use of nature's resources to satisfy needs. Societies with economies that have competition have better productivity and accumulate greater wealth than those that do not. More accumulated wealth produced by individual members means there is more available to help others. Yet accumulating secular wealth is not interesting to God, only obeying the Commandments. A wealthy, productive society can give more to the needy than a poor society. But Jesus taught that God does not want winners and losers on earth, but wants everyone to join as sheep that He shepherds. He said that the wealthy will have a difficult time entering Heaven, and predicted that "the meek will inherit the earth." The principles of competition may concentrate the wealth to the most successful competitors, but the Christian conscience calls to spread the wealth back evenly among all men.
Why go to a church to worship with others when Jesus taught that each person can communicate directly with God through quiet prayer? To spread knowledge about Christianity, Jesus established the church to bring followers together. The fellowship of the followers helps reinforce their faith and commitment to teach others. Over the centuries, many Christian churches have evolved that bring diversity in the interpretations of Christianity. Since Christianity is a spiritual faith that cannot be proven, none of these interpretations can be considered right or wrong. Although differences of opinions have had negative results in the past with disputes that sometimes involved outright wars, these differences have also had positive results by broadening the appeal of the faith. A Christian can go to his favorite church of worship and yet know that the basic precepts of the faith are the ones outlined here.
Some people prefer describing themselves as “followers of Jesus” rather than as “Christians.” “Follower of Jesus” has the interesting implication of transcending sometimes conflicting theological doctrines of the various Christian denominations. Regardless of the church that a Christian attends, whether Catholic or Protestant, there cannot be any argument as to what a “follower of Jesus” does. The follower believes that Jesus was divine, revealed God's Will, and died to give mankind the chance for salvation. The follower strives to live a life like the one Jesus lived on earth.
