Finding Balance in Your Walk with Jesus
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2020
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
Rigidity and laxity are difficult obstacles to avoid when trying to find balance in your faith life.
When we treat Christianity as a project, that leads to rigidity. When we treat Christianity like a projection, that leads to laxity. If you’re just looking at what Christians are supposed to do and then following those instructions, you’re treating your faith like a project and that’s bound to make you rigid. At the other extreme, if you see Jesus as a softy or a buddy who’s going to look the other way when you do the wrong thing, that’s just your projection of who he is. This mentality is bound to make you lax.
How do we escape these two extremes? Here’s an analogy from Fr. Mike. When a pilot gets ready to fly a plane, he has a certain trust that the plane will fly, but he still has to check that everything is working properly before taking off. Also, he still has to check the controls even as he is flying and putting his life in the plane’s hands. There is a symbiotic balance between trust and diligence here. That’s what walking with Jesus should be like.
Let’s take Christ seriously. He is infinitely loving. Let’s take grace seriously. God’s grace is infinite. However, it requires application. When you say, “Jesus, I trust in you” those words should help you not only let go, but also take a leap of faith and faith without works is dead (James 2:17).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I don't know if you've ever found yourself in that position where on one day you're kind |
| 0:04.7 | of like, really, really drowl down and like here's the, I'm rigidly following these |
| 0:08.5 | rules of Christianity or like, I'm not taking them seriously enough. |
| 0:13.1 | I think like, what's the middle road for that? |
| 0:15.3 | I mean, in Father Mike Smith's, and this is a sense of presence. |
| 0:26.6 | One of the things I've encountered. |
| 0:29.3 | Are people who are concerned that on the one hand, they find themselves in their pursuit |
| 0:33.7 | of Christ and they're living out Christianity or being Catholic that they're like, I don't |
| 0:37.0 | want to be too rigid. |
| 0:38.6 | Like I don't want to be too like, inflexible when it comes to my following Christ. |
| 0:43.6 | Like I find myself like paying more attention to the rules than to anything else. |
| 0:47.0 | On the other hand, they're like, but I don't want to be lax either, right? |
| 0:51.0 | So I don't just kind of want to take this for granted. |
| 0:53.4 | I want to be serious about this, but I don't want to be too serious. |
| 0:57.0 | I don't want to be too un-serious. |
| 0:58.8 | I don't want to be too lax. |
| 0:59.6 | I don't want to be too carefree in some ways, right? |
| 1:03.2 | Right? |
| 1:04.2 | Between rigidity and laxity. |
| 1:06.4 | What's the middle road between being true rigid and being too lax? |
| 1:09.6 | Being too inflexible and being too too flexible? |
| 1:12.6 | I think that's a really great question because you know, sometimes in people's lives, you |
... |
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