Insignificant as dog dung

Sunday March 25th, Philippians 3: all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God's righteousness. Religion all too often is rules. We want to put the Ten Commandments in the courthouses and the right judges on the bench. We want everyone in the congregation to agree with us on all the important things, and the unimportant ones also. When all is said and done, what we are after is not religion at all, but control. Paul reminds us that none of that is important. Some of it might be good and some of it might be bad, but in the end it really doesn’t matter all that much. What matters is a relationship with God.