Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jensen Holt McNair.

I'm a private school kid. Not just that, but a private Christian school kid.

Until I went to college, I spent my life learning and growing up in a community

of people who all professed Christianity. It was an incredibly rewarding and enriching environment to

grow up in. I have my love of theology, of studying scripture and writing because of the

teachers and wisdom that I learned within those communities. But I also learned

something else in those communities, something that was never explicitly taught, but was just infused

into the communities that I grew up in. I learned how to make myself look like a really good

Christian, and I learned what happened when you didn't. I heard the way that

people talked and treated certain people, people who didn't meet the standards of religiosity. And I learned,

I learned that to be accepted or considered a good Christian, I had to do certain things, present

myself in certain ways, and outwardly appear

devout. So many of us learned the same lesson. To be a Christian is to live a certain kind of

life, to do the religious things, to attend to the right school, go to the right church,

be involved in the right organizations and maybe give money where it's needed.

There are hoops to jump through and images to curate on this road to being a good Christian.

But along the way, I'm afraid that we lost a crucial aspect of the Christian's call.

Obedience. Now, we're obedient to the rules of polite Christian society.

Obedient to do the right things, obedient to look a certain way, but obedient to the ways of God.

Obedient to the call to be transformed inwardly, to study his word and follow its wisdom,

to live lives that are submitted to his authority? No thanks.

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