Who has cast a spell on you?

 This week's verses are Galatians 3:1-5:

You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you? Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort? Have you suffered so many things for nothing?—if indeed it was for nothing. Does God then give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?

 The Galatian church had started out with a vivid understanding of God's supernatural power and grace. Unfortunately, with time, they began to turn it into the kind of pagan legalism they had before they encountered God. But this happens to us all, even to whole churches.

The human brain has a kind of immune system against new ideas. It's called cognitive dissonance. If someone presents you with an idea that is outrageous or inconvenient or that conflicts with what you already think is true, the brain will fight it. 

This is why people get angry over political disagreements and won't be convinced even if you can show them hard evidence that they are wrong. The brain doesn't want to rethink things. It's also why people will leave the doctor's office convinced that they need to lose weight, quit smoking, or whatever, only to seemingly forget the conversation within a few days. The brain is constantly looking for a shortcut, and it NEVER wants to be wrong.

You know that friend who got themselves into shape who you run into after two years and they've gained all of their weight back and started smoking, and you're like "what happened??" Or that ministry that used to be really cutting edge and spirit-led that's now just going through the motions like a bunch of tired zombies and you're like "what happened??" That's what Paul was feeling when he was asking the Galatians "what happened??"

When he knew them before, they knew the truth about Jesus and they were free. But now they were just a bunch of lost do-gooders. Their mental and tribal immune systems had rejected as unnatural the supernatural transplant of God's kingdom into their lives and they were back to the sorry state they'd been in before they'd been saved. They started out overcome with revival and ended up trapped in a mess of legalism, administrivia, and ritual.

It's exasperating! They should have known better because they did know better in the beginning. Their behavior doesn't even make sense! Paul confronts them: "did you reason your way into faith? did you buy your way into grace? did you stand up to spiritual bullies only to join them?" It's like someone cast a spell on them and made them dumb!

But we do this. We forget that we know a supernatural God. We sometimes forget, at least on an emotional level, that he even exists at all. We forget that we are saved by grace, that he paid it all already. We forget that faith is the seed the other things grow from. These are all things which don't make logical sense, which are not commonly lived out in the society we are part of, and which take some effort to maintain.

We forget because our lazy narcissistic brains want an easier way. Much like the Galatians, we want a predictable routine, beliefs we can explain and justify to those around us, and to be self-justified enough that we don't have to sustain this idea that we are irredeemably flawed without God's supernatural intervention.

We want the reward of heaven and the self-justification of calling ourselves Christians, but we don't want to work to maintain the connection. We don't want to be laughed at. So we choose the easy path.

But which reality do you want? The world's reality where church is something you do as a kind of spiritual hobby? Or God's reality where the world is something you do as part of living out church? Which reality will drive our thoughts and choices? Which will we invest in with our resources?

The Galatians worked harder than they needed to in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance of Christ crucified, when all they had to do was continue to believe what they believed in the beginning. Don't let the world's familiar structures charm you into falling for the same foolishness that Paul called out two thousand years ago.