Insurance?

       I've heard tell that there are people who view God as an insurance policy. If they act well enough and God exists, heaven will be a shoe-in. If God does not exist, well, they have acted fairly well and they are none the worse. I don't think that's how it works.

       The thing that stuck me in today's passage from Luke is the take no prisoners attitude of Jesus. You are either in all the way, take up your cross or you are of the world. The Way was not intended to be an insurance policy. If you accept the teachings of Jesus Christ and the life he lived ( and died for ), you make it your way of life. It has to be accepted 100%, no ands, ifs or buts. You make the commitment warts and all, mistakes and foibles, not waiting for a better moment. 

         I had a little shutter there for a moment, right out of my past. I was recalling a clergy member who proclaimed that "Catholicism was not a smorgasbord! You cannot pick and choose what you want to believe!"  Well just to clarify, this 100% in the 'business' of which I speak has nothing to do with the rules and rubrics of any organized religion. What picking up your cross means is acceptance of your holiness, acceptance of your roles in salvation, acceptance of who God made you to be, acceptance that holiness and wholeness is not of this world.

        Furthermore, we are not required to hate our father, mother, spouse, brother or sisters. Are you accepting The Way? you must be willing to take that stand in your life.  Not unlike the passage concerning Isaac and Abraham. Abraham was all in even if it meant losing his own son. The willingness in heart is well known to God. Your heart is well known to God.          

        

          

Luke 14:25-35

 Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

 ‘Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure heap; they throw it away. Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’