Laying aside every weight

Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us that we have to lay aside weights and sins that easily beset us.

In the last thirty years, I have often been told that the weights are things like bad attitudes, or difficult pasts and such things.  While those may be true weights, I have in these past seven years been learning that the weights are also the ideals that my religion has called fundamental to the faith.  (I have already addressed some of those ideals, but there are others. Many others.)

Some of these ideals that have become fundamental to our faith are music standards and dress standards among other standards.  We base our fellowship upon who follows or does not follow our standards.  I know of a pastor who has in the past five years  quit fellowshipping with churches of "like" faith in his area because he disagreed with some of their "low" standards.  There are churches in his area that he tolerates because their students attend his school, but he has something negative to say about them all.  

If the "high" degree of our ideals forces us to judge other believers to the point of separating from them, then I must ask whether our ideals have become a weight.

In my case, when the trial of my faith hit me so hard, what I found was that the ideals were indeed a weight.  They neither sustained me through my trial and grief, nor did they give me hope or increase my faith.  I found them to be in the way of my view of God.    Because they provided absolutely no benefit to me in the trial, I was forced to rethink them.

When I found that they were merely ideals and not true fundamentals, I was able to look at them in a new light.  I was able to set some of these things aside as weights.  These are things that caused me to judge my fellow Christians unjustly.  These are things that caused me to think too highly of myself.  These are things that are not necessary to my Christian walk.  These are the things that were producing unnecessary guilt.

These are the weights that must be put aside.  If I am to thrive in Christ, I must lose those things that hindered me.  

I suppose that this and my previous posts can be considered my own 95 Theses.   I have nailed them to the wall.  I refuse to judge another Christian based upon my own ideals.  Any ideals that I choose to live by are mine alone.  I have no right to impose them upon another.  

This does not mean that there are not sins that I or others commit.  Gossiping is still a sin.  Fornication is still a sin.  Pride is still a sin.  

This has been a long hard journey for me.  Some of my steps to freedom have been scary.  But God has not been displeased with me.  He still is faithful to point out my areas of loving myself more than Him and others.  He still shows me my areas of bitterness and pride.  But I confess to having a new joy in my Christian walk.  The ideals of others that I once believed to be commands are no longer my measuring stick.  Yes, I am free.