Prologue

    

    I was raised in a household who were members of a strict Christian church. We adhered to a regimented lifestyle in which all aspects of our lives were dictated by religious teaching. What we ate, read, the sports we played, the persons who we were to marry, our types of entertainment, where our children were to be sent to school, the clothes we wore and the jewelry we didn’t all were directed by the church. Maybe dictate is too harsh a word. The truth be told most adherents viewed these teachings as guidelines, the more liberal of the group viewed them as simply suggestions.

It is difficult to say how many people strictly adhered to the teachings. As a child I assumed everyone did. So I did and I found them beneficial. A monk of sorts living a religious life of self-denial and obedience that cultivated a discipline in me that has directed my path to a successful life.  A good job, wife, a boy and a girl, dog, shadowbox fenced home in a gated community type of success — and happiness, but the system was wrong. 

There is a kind of theater that people in congregational religious organizations play — and not just in the church in which I spent 40 plus years of my life.  Globally there are people who profess to be followers of their religion of choice who on closer examination you will see adhere to little of the teachings contained in their holy books, rather they have become experts in the ritual and dogma of the organizations set up as gatekeepers of each religious group.

I watched weekend after weekend as the devoted assemble in houses of worship. Every weekend the same cast of characters, albeit sometimes inhabiting a different body, would enter these sacred places. The heavy laden, the overburdened, the relieved, and  the grateful, the holier than thou, the worshipper, the exalter, the praiser, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the sick and the healthy, the dying and the destitute, the rich and proud, they all come. They spend time. They pray,  They worship. They learn. They discuss. They sing. They listen. They leave in ecstasy.  A good feeling that last them anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days and when it wears off it leaves a void that they long to fill, making the next encounter, the weekend to come, so much more anticipated.  Is this cycle what Jesus promised his followers when he told them to “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” or ““Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)?  I don’t think so.

That is why I wrote this book. I began a journey of “learning from” Jesus. Not a presumptuous spiritual journey where I seek signs and interpret random occurrence in my life as communication from Jesus. My approach was a more practical and scholarly and maybe novel. I decide to simply read his teachings, find out more about the context surround those statements and extract practical guidance. What I learned had nothing to do with what I ate, read, the sports I played, the person who I married, my choice in entertainment, where my children were to be sent to school, the clothes I wear or the jewelry that I did not wear. No Jesus’s teaching was about my heart, the seeds he asked to plant there and the character that grows from it. 

I enjoyed my journey. Hope you enjoy the book.