A Cliff Notes Kind of Life

Do you remember how you managed to get through all the texts you had to read in middle and high school? Or maybe even college? If you're like me you read them with passion because they were good and even great pieces of literature. Of course I was blessed, I got to read not only your traditional pieces, but even some more current pieces. You know...

• Hamlet
• The Great Gatsby
• Little Women
• Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry
• Great Expectations
• Things Fall Apart
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• The Scarlet Letter
• Their Eyes Were Watching God
• A Raisin in the Sun
• Beach Music (because I was lucky) 

.....and so so many more. And by the way, for anyone that reads any of my posts and is afraid of the Common Core State Standards and thinks all these texts and many more are going away, please visit www.corestandards.org, click on the ELA standards, then on the left choose Appendix B to see just a sampling of the texts at each grade level. I promise all the texts I just listed (except Beach Music) and many, many more are listed as text exemplars. But I am not going to get on my CCSS soap box, because I have something more important for all of us to think about. 

So now that you are thinking about all the texts you've read....or maybe didn't read. How did you handle reading them? I personally read the books word for word and loved any discussions that we had in class. However, I also know that there are these little yellow and black books. Yes, some of you thought about those books right away because that is how you got around not reading the text. You got the Cliff Notes version. 

Now I do not even know what the inside of a Cliff Notes book looks like, but I can only imagine...inside there some highlights on the important parts of the texts. Just enough that if you relied solely on the Cliff Notes version, you could get by. 

Now let me ask you this. Are you a Cliff Notes kind of Christian? 

As I read Beth Moore's book, "Feathers in My Nest," she poses just this question. Do you only allow yourself to know just the stories and the traditions practiced within the walls of your own church. Are you surviving on just the stories you recall from childhood. You know the ones: 

• Adam and Eve 
• The Garden of Eden
• Moses
• Jonah and the Whale
• The Birth of Jesus
• Jesus's Ministry
• The Death of Jesus

Do you live in the comfort of your own thinking and fear sharing your understanding and how God has impacted your life because you fear being wrong? Do you fear hearing what your neighbor says about God because he goes to a Presbyterian Church and you go to a Baptist Church? 

For those that read the Cliff Notes to just get by in school, do you think the Cliff Notes version of the Bible, the Cliff Notes version of a Christian life is going to be enough? You see God wants you to learn more and more about Him, about how we should be living as Christians. Sure the Cliff Notes version may feed you for a short time, but to really grow, you have to be willing to open the good book and open up your life to more. We are all continually growing and to keep feeding your spiritual self, you have to open yourself up to grow by feeding on the word, by sharing the word with others, and by being willing to become vulnerable to come to new and deeper understandings. 

So what is your Christian life like? 

Colossians 1:9-10 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. 

Ephesians 4:15-16 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.