A Heavy Question

Photo by Fynn schmidt on Unsplash

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you,
and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
-Matthew 11:28:30

What goes through your mind, when you read these words from Our Lord? Do you think, “Light?! Easy?! There is nothing light and easy about Christianity”? Do your thoughts then wander to all of the rules and regulations? All of the fasts and penances? All of the guilt and Ten Commandments? Do you begin to complain about Christ calling you to die to yourself, become a new man, be poor in spirit, meek, humble, sacrificing and merciful and think, “I don’t have time for all of that. I’m living a different life in a different time.” Don’t be surprised. You’re in the majority.

It’s so much easier to do nothing, while feeding ourselves a steady diet of excuses, justifications, “tomorrow promises”, and other people’s lives. I do this. The majority does this. After all, it’s how our society has conditioned us and like trained dogs, we’ve obediently cooperated. Think about your dreams and goals and what you hear about them. They result in two traps. Either we are told what we wish to accomplish is too difficult, too dangerous, too risky, too commonplace, too avant garde, too much responsibility, too foolish, too expensive, too… or we are told we can achieve anything and everything our hearts desire if only we are willing to make the necessary sacrifices. If we’ve lived long enough, we’ve fallen into both traps. If we choose to believe the first trap, then we never try. If we fall into the second trap, we fail attempting those dreams for which we have little or no aptitude or resources. Discouraged, we never try anything else again. Yet, this disheartened stagnation is where this conditioning is designed to lead us. Society prefers us to be despondent wage slaves continually spending what we earn in vain attempts to find some meaning and purpose in pointless consumption.

None of this even begins to cover how impossible society makes out being Christian to be. Included with the usual naysaying are the guilt trips decent folk give to those who wish to be Christian. Christianity is a religion of hate. Intelligent people know better. Christianity is a huge crutch. Christianity limits or denies you your ability to live your life to its fullest. Christianity is misogynistic. Christianity doesn’t understand…. Basically, here’s a boat load of societal guilt for you to overcome, if you’ve made your way through the other and still want to be Christian.

Yet, what have we done? Wanting to have something in our lives, we have drained everything of any consequence from Christianity. We are content to live as though Jesus Christ has called the soft and flabby to recline, binge eat, complete the next level and watch the next episode. Living only for ourselves, we tell ourselves God loves me just as I am and everyone is going to Heaven.

But if that is true, then what burden and yoke did Our Savior bid us drop? Why did He still call what He had to offer a burden and a yoke? Are we even practicing Christianity at all?