LRC, Houston - the weekends-free church in Houston, Texas

I’ve been involved in some high stakes adventures much of my life. I’ve been on gambling junkets, played the stock market, started new businesses, and lost a bundle in the commodities market. However, to my amazement, I discovered that one of the most high stakes games has been religion. I missed that! I didn’t realize how serious and critical that game was until about four years ago.

I should have seen it when Paul wrote in I Cor. 9:24 that we runners are COMPETING! And guess what? There is only one prize so run to win baby, RUN! This “limited number” of prizes of course are reserved for the SAVED, those who jump through all the religious hoops, toe the theological denominational line, and climb the ladder of religious Pharisee-ism. Yes, that spirit is much alive and still with us today. Maybe more than ever!

As Phillip Gully wrote, “Religion becomes one more arena of competition, though in religion the game is HIGH STAKES! The winners gain paradise and the losers are DAMNED”! You’re graded primarily on attendance and how much money you give. If you’re a good member of you local congregation, you obey every doctrine, you don’t ask difficult questions, and you certainly don’t stray from the established belief system.

Visiting a non-Christian church (whatever that may be) is definitely frowned upon. You could pick up a demon you know. And God would not be happy! You don’t want to make Go mad now do you?

Such dualistic thinking and lifestyle has deeper roots than we know. In this high stakes winners vs. losers game, it’s a WIN-LOSE philosophy. So, if anyone dares to say that God is LOVE and that we ALL WIN. Well now, that takes all of the competitive fun out of it. I mean, if everyone is going to be SAVED, what’s the point of a religious system?

Indeed! God does have the final Word.

The thought that everyone might be a winner is disturbing to well-founded principles of meritocracy. If there will be “divine judgment” at the end with everyone passing through the fire that guards the gate of heaven, and no one doing an “extended stay hotel” deal, bummer!

God is not playing some high stakes cosmic game!

God created us to love us, give us free will, giving us co-creational powers, and then whatever dross is still stuck to us at the end of this world’s trek, it gets burnt off and we continue the eternal journey with Abba Father. I no longer get bent out of shape when others don’t agree with me. That’s not my concern. My “high stakes” is to LOVE when I’m not loved. My high stakes is to LOVE when I am reviled. And my high stakes is to even love my enemies.

Now, we’re talking real “high stakes”- like my LIFE!

And, it as Jesus’s life as well.