There’s an old hymn you may know that goes “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.” It’s not just a hymn though, it’s true. The more I study and reflect on the Jesus we learn about in the gospels, the more it becomes clear to me the difficulty of making Christ the ground we stand on. It is too tempting to concoct our own ideas, our own assumptions about how we should think, and live and behave and call it faithful, to call it “Christian.” But fundamentally, being a Christian means following after Jesus Christ. There’s no other way around it.
Jesus and His way are the solid rock we have to stand on. There are people who will show you, tell you, and argue with you to convince you otherwise. That we must behave “this way,” that now is the time that we must be powerful and aggressive, we must be close-fisted, we must be combative or inhospitable. But not so. Jesus says otherwise. He lived life on this earth himself, and he told us, he showed us that there’s another way… Jesus is the solid rock we have to stand on. All other ground is sinking sand.