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Overthinking Christianity

Micah Ward
3 min readDec 5, 2019

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It’s the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law.

Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplash

According to a pastor I know, there are 613 Old Testament laws. It’s not surprising then to hear people say :

“I don’t like religion. There’s too many rules.”

“I can’t be a Christian. I’m not good enough to follow all those rules.”

“Look at her! She claims to be a Christian. But Christians don’t act like that, there’s rules against that.”

Yes, there are 613 laws in the Old Testament. And some people think that since they can’t obey them all there is no point in trying to live a Christian life. They may be a very good person, but they will shy away from organized Christianity. Maybe it is because they are afraid they will fall short of what they believe Christianity requires of them.

Well guess what? We all fall short. It’s human nature. And the truth is that Christianity really doesn’t require all that much. It simply requires that you believe that God exists, that God created us and that God loves us and is concerned about us. A Christian believes that God sent his son Jesus to earth to show us humans (who are created in the image of God) how to live in such a way as to please God. By believing that Jesus came to earth, and died on our behalf, we are accepted into the complete presence of God, also known as Heaven. In…

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Micah Ward
Micah Ward

Written by Micah Ward

Micah is a retiree who writes, runs, prays and enjoys craft beer in the rolling hills of central Tennessee. He goes to the ocean when he can.

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