"I'm quite comfortable without any religion, I don't see any practical sense in it... I don't like the way certain Christians behave... I don't like the way things work in the Church...."

These are things I often hear from people or read in different blogs. What do all these phrases have in common? They all assume that religion is something that I choose because I like it. Something that is supposed to meet my needs, fulfill my expectations, or suit to my taste. This attitude is even somewhat understandable. After all, we live in a modern economy, where an incredible number of sellers of goods and services compete for our attention, and our money. On the Internet we see this competition particularly clearly. Many of us spend almost all day scrolling through pages with ads flashing all over the margins. They scream and jump trying to get our attention: buy this, try that, have a medical check-up, sign up for a gym, go on a vacation. 

Naturally, we evaluate all these numerous proposals from the point of view of our needs and capabilities. Do I really need that new toothbrush? Won't I do fine without this self-improvement class? And, more often than not, it turns out that we don't really need any of those things.

But the Christian faith is not a product or service that I can evaluate in terms of whether it suits me.

This is when the Lord of the universe and my rightful Lord comes to claim me. God, who created me for a specific purpose — for eternal and blissful life. In one children's fairy tale there is a story about how an orphan boy is found by a messenger from his father, the king, to take him home to the king's palace.

The king and his messenger are not trying to sell something to this boy. They want to bring him home, where he belongs, where he will grow up in a family that loves him, to return him to his Father, to whom he rightfully belongs.

The gospel is a message about how the Son of God became a man, died on the Cross and rose from the dead to return us to our Father's house, to Heaven, to that family of angels and saints whose head is God, and where we will be eternally and infinitely happy.

We don't really need the absolute majority of goods and services that are aggressively advertised on the Internet — we can choose another food or another smartphone model - none of this is really important. But we can't choose another Father or another home. Because there is no other reason home for us.

And the question that the Gospel puts before us is not at all whether it suits me. If this is the truth, then this is the only thing that can suit me at all. There is simply no other paradise, no other eternal and blissful life.

Original publication: https://radiovera.ru/podhodit-li-mne-evangelie.html