Amway. Just speaking aloud that one word seems to send cringes to the faces of everyone I know, like they just took a big bite of what looked like a delicious yummy golden apple only to discover it was bitterly rotten. Every new "multi level" marketing company has to sort of get past that hump that they aren't like Amway, they aren't a pyramid scheme and that they don't "taste rotten". A few bad apples ruined Amway's reputation. Who doesn't get that urge to run when you start to hear the sales pitch from a friend that just "joined the next best thing"? I would describe this much like how I reacted to anyone sharing Jesus with me. Just another person trying to get me to go to their Church. It was a long hard sales pitch for those loving people that God placed in my path.
I love to think back on my PJ times...which in my world refers to "Pre-Jesus" times. PJ...I used to hear the word Jesus and I would literally cringe! I would turn that radio station so quick once I realized that it was a Christian station. I would turn quickly the other direction if I saw the neighbor who liked to invite me to his church on Sunday. Jesus was nothing more than a bitter tasting apple to me. How or what got me to that response? It's a long complicated story...but it boils down to that I associated Jesus and God to the people around me that represented Him. I didn't even bother to get to know Him. I chose to put blinders on and saw God through the eyes of the Church that let me down and the Christians around me who I viewed as self righteous and hypocritical. Unfortunately, I only remembered all the "bad apples" I bit into growing up. There were people out there slaughtering the name of Jesus and I bought their sales pitch, hook line and sinker without doing any further research. What a small world I had created. Do we let others view of God determine our image of God? Do we really know Him? Have we taken the time to have a relationship with Him and Him alone? We can not understand who we are in Christ...unless we really know who God truly is? So much misinformation has been given to us on God. I spent years with an idea of who God was without ever opening up the source...the Bible to see for myself or asking Him directly. I was looking at the world like it was a rotten apple...I was running away from Church like it was Amway and that made my view of God ultimately cringe worthy. It's heart wrenching that I choose to do that for so many years. Good news is...it's been five years since AJ....(after Jesus) and my I'm learning about what true love is all about. I don't cringe at His name, in fact I want to shout, jump or just smile when I hear a great Christian song singing his Glory on the Christian Station. I can't wait to go to Church on Sundays and be filled with His wisdom. I want to just praise Him when I hear a story of His redeeming love. I'm learning to be rid of all the "rotten" views I have of God. He isn't any old rotten apple. He is like biting into a perfectly sweet juicy Golden Delicious which makes your taste buds explode times a million.
