What I have found is that when a Christian makes the transition from religious legalism into grace – to a great extent they tend to be very much the same person as they were before they became a Christian. But now they believe in Jesus, but without the stress, naivety and dogma. The process of experiencing Christianity as it is perceived but actually is not – has the effect of driving a person as far away from those things as possible. When before you used to criticize people for indulging their sins, now that you have experienced the struggle of keeping your own life clean, and you know you are righteous by faith, you are now inclined to see the struggles of others with compassion.
I do also find that no matter what your religious or spiritual convictions are, seeking justice in one form or another seems to be a constant factor in many people’s lives. I suppose it is this tendency to seek after justice, which makes it so tempting to criticize and judge other people. If someone does me wrong or they are abusing me, I ought to consider taking some kind of action against that. If someone commits a crime against me or another, I am responsible to report that person. This kind of action has little to do with a sense of seeking justice - it is more along the lines of simply doing what is right. When it comes to seeking justice I suppose what I am trying to highlight here is the need to get away from stewing over something that is simply out of our hands and is, quite frankly, none of our business.
I believe that The Work of Byron Katie is probably the only spiritual or self-help method which accepts people and things, just the way they are, without seeking justice. I suppose it is for this reason that it is seen by many as being rather controversial.
Christianity is meant to be something which radically changes a person’s life for the better – that is the ideal, but it is not what I have experienced. If someone came into Christianity as an anxious, negative and timid person – those negative traits will still tend to exist to a great extent. Likewise, if someone became a Christian when they were confident and out-going – they will still be confident and outgoing when they come into the grace message. This raises the question as to whether Christian spiritual concepts can actually make a difference to a person’s life: does reading the Bible regularly change a person’s character? Does prayer change negative circumstances to positive ones?
This Christian “Square One” is fine if you are relatively happy, positive and good things happen in your life – but what do you do when you are not happy and satisifed and things just tend to go wrong most of the time? It is at that stage that you need something that really works – something that will make a positive difference in your life. It is at that moment that all the spiritual teaching you have had up to that moment, is put to the test. Unfortunetly, I have found that most of the things I have learned have not made a bit of difference in my life – that can be a tough reality to deal with! When you have clung onto all sorts of high-hopes for many years, only to realise most of it does not really seem to work – that is a hard thing to deal with. This raises the question of what really does work?
This brings us swiftly onto the subject of inner transformation – the topic of the next blog post.
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