When I was growing up, every night my family of 6 would sit around our dinner table and pray for our food. Every Sunday we would go to church for service. Every Wednesday we would go to church for activities. Once a month was communion. As kids, we were obligated to do these things because my parents enforced them. When I left home, I felt like they were things I was still obligated to do.
When did you realize your faith was just an obligation? Have you ever thought of it that way? Do you honestly feel like you have a choice in your religion or are you just going through the motions? I'm talking to all of you with whatever religion you believe in.
Not long ago the song More Like Fallin' in Love by Jason Gray came on and I heard the words so clearly that it had me shaking my head yes. The song was about how it's not easy to be 'religious' but that our faith should be more like falling in love with God than obligation.
I've never been good at following rules. I've been told that if someone tries to put me in a box, any sort of box, that I will get out of it as quickly as I can - that I can have rules put on me or I'll break them just because they're rules. It's the same way with religion. If I feel like I'm obligated to do something, I probably won't end up doing it. Being a Christian often feels like a prison, if you don't look at it the right way. So many rules, so many consequences, so many requirements and restrictions. It goes against everything I am at my core.
Love is something we humans are always searching for. Acceptance, someone to tell us we're beautiful, someone to wrap us in their arms and take care of us, to give us the feeling that we're doing the right thing. I've been struggling with love and acceptance since I was a kid. I want to be loved but at the first sign of it, I flee. I've realized that's how I am with God too.
Instead of being obligated and required to believe & act a certain way, I want to feel like I'm falling in love with Him. As soon as He starts showing that it can actually be like that, I go back into the mindset of 'fine, I'll just pray every day, do my devotions and go to church and He'll love me' when all He wants me to do is let go. He wants to sweep me off my feet and show me that I am loved with a deeper love than a human can feel.
In the same way, marriage is something I feel is an obligation, not something that's sweet and wonderful. I feel that our society tells us that we should go to school, fall in love and get married. It's the course of life and is 'just the way we do things.' As much as that has changed over the last 30 years, it's still something many of us look to do since we don't feel we can be alone. Since this seems like a rule, it makes me want to run away... fast.
Maybe if I stopped looking at my faith as something I have to do and start looking at it as falling in love, I'll see the emotional growth I've been needing in my personal life to allow myself to be open to loving a human rather than running from it. In the same sense, if I stop looking at marriage as an obligation and focus on the falling in love part, it won't seem so terrifying. Why can't we just enjoy the falling in love portion of everything we do and stop focusing on the outcome and requirements?
Guess that's just how it starts... as food for thought.
More Like Fallin' in Love - Jason Gray
Give me rules, I will break them
Show me lines, I will cross them
I need more than a truth to believe
I need a truth that lives, moves, and breathes
To sweep me off my feet
Its gotta be
More like falling in love
Than something to believe in
More like losing my heart
Than giving my allegiance
Caught up, called out
Come take a look at me now
Its like I'm falling
Its like I'm falling in love
Give me words, I'll misuse them
Obligations, I'll misplace them
Cuz all religion ever made of me
Was just a sinner with a stone tied to my feet
It never set me free
Love, Love
Deeper and deeper
It was love that made me a believer
In more than a name, a faith, a creed
Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me
