Jesus versus Paul: How to grow as a Christian.

I remember once having a conversation with some denominational types about ministry, I rarely agree with church types and while they were discussing issues of church governance, I kept banging on about reaching the poor and the marginalised.
I have been told before now that reaching the poor and marginalised is not ministry, that ministry is maintaining order in church and looking for small growth in numbers.
At this one meeting however I heard the most amazing statement for why churches act the way they do. A minister I respect turned to me and said: 'You don't like Paul much do you?' He was referring to Paul from the New Testament, he who travelled around the Roman Empire planting churches and writing letters to tell everyone how wrong they were about things. Paul seems to have become the poster boy for organised religion.
'I prefer Jesus.' I replied.
The retort I heard next simultaneously astounded me and solidified my position as someone who just doesn't fit in to a regular church structure.
'Well Jesus never had to run a church. Paul did.'

I have to admit, that is true. Jesus was, as far as we know, a travelling rabbi. He would go from town to town spreading good news to the poor and the marginalised. Paul did establish churches, and told those churches the proper way of doing things.

I reminded those good denomination types how Jesus didn't run a church, He changed the world, and that's exactly what I want to do.
Needless to say I no longer get invited to denominational events and receive no support. I had the last word, but it cost me greatly.

There has been a rise recently in Red Letter Christianity, those who say that we only need the words of Jesus (in some Bibles, Jesus' words were printed in red ink to show just how important Jesus is). And I do admire that. The thing is, Jesus and Paul aren't at odds, although it does seem that way.
Paul is often used to suppress women, he does not give women permission to preach. Jesus doesn't seem to mind that the very first Gospel preachers were the women who saw Him on Easter Sunday, instead Jesus tells them to go and tell others.

And then there's the issue which I have been thinking about today. One of those seemingly great dichotomies between Jesus and Paul, that of spiritual growth.
Jesus is talking one day, and His way of explaining following God is to bring a small child to stand before those gathered and say: Unless you become like a child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thus we have the claim of so many Christians that theirs is a childlike faith. After all, Jesus taught this.

Then we have Paul who is frustrated at the Church at Corinth and asks them to grow up. He says that he's fed up with feeding them milk as he would a child and he wants them to move on to solid food, spiritually speaking.

So which should we do, have this childlike faith we have attributed to Jesus or have a robust adult faith that Paul encourages? This is one of those places where Jesus and Paul are in agreement, although it may not seem like it on the surface.
Faith, spiritually, Christianity, it's a process. Jesus is right in that we have to start off as a child. But Jesus doesn't encourage us to stay there. Immediately after this He talks about huge spiritual issues like unforgivingness and our responsibility in how we deal with temptation, these are not things children deal with very well.
So we must start off like a child, but not even Jesus is suggesting that we stay there.

People are expected to grow.

You've probably heard it said that the average driver thinks they are better than the average driver. The same is true spiritually. People assume that they have a robust, mature faith. That they are growing spiritually, and growing with God. The reality is that we don't know what to compare our faith to and so we assume that ours is the benchmark.

I have spoken before about my own journey of deconstruction and reconstruction, and it is an ongoing process. So I'd like to use the next few blog entries to look at some various examples of growing in faith, and examples of people who haven't. Please think of this as encouragement. You might be wondering if the Christianity you're currently experiencing is all there is. You might have an inclination that there's something else, something more, something better in spiritually. Let us take some time together soon and explore this. And please do give it a try. Just start by sitting quietly for twenty minutes. Don't speak, not even silently and to God. Just wait for one word to come to you and allow the depths of God to speak to the depths of you, and let that one word be a centre. It's only twenty minutes, and God might just show you a new way of growing.