TECHNICALLY I’m a ‘Committed Christian’, though I sometimes think I don’t rate very highly!!

Anyway, it makes me think how we make words say what they are not meant to say.

Christian is a good example.

It usually seems to mean a list of impossible definitions that could fill a dictionary: keeping the rules, believing in a burdensome truth, going to a building called the church.

And the church is like an institution where just about everyone is in each other’s bad books…getting it wrong is the norm, and JOY is OUT.

It even gets to mean ‘being good’…as if we could under our own steam!

If the central Christian word is used at all, J---- , it is used it is an expletive.

A certain prime minister once coined the phrase getting back to basics…maybe I can start there.

Christians, who know Jesus, knows he comes into the life of people like you and me who are ready to say, “I’m not one of the good ones, not one of life’s triumphs, not one who has it together.”

Jesus comes into the life of our family, our town, our world, our politics.

There too we certainly haven’t got it together.

We need food banks to eat!

We need extinction to survive!

We need civil disobedience to remind ourselves of good government!

We need rifts and quarrels to know we are still united!

Frankly, Jesus is not about rules, not about truths, but about care (the word is actually love, but it is not a not very reliable word till we claim it back for what it is).

Jesus never did set up an institution.

When I have problems, God is the cause of the problem, so I say.

But, when I have a crisis on my hands, God is equally the solution.

Maybe I’m like stroppy kids…depending on the mood I’m in.

To use another favourite dictionary definition: I have dog in a manger approach….

Maybe it’s time for me to go back to basics, and do a Christian refresher course…on love!!!!!

Pray I commit!

l Find more Thoughts for the Week online at stroudnewsandjournal.co.uk