Watering Down Jesus
I didn’t think God would convict me so gently yet abruptly.
Usually when I think about conviction, I imagine being corrected. Exposed. Called out.
This felt different.
This felt like God lovingly pulling up a chair beside me and saying, “Can we talk about something?”
There was no shame attached to it. No feeling of being scolded. No sense that God was disappointed in me.
Quite the opposite.
Through it all, I felt loved.
Deeply loved.
The kind of love that tells the truth because it refuses to leave you where you are.
Lately I’ve been sitting in Matthew 15, and honestly, it has been making me rethink more than I expected.
The chapter opens with the Pharisees confronting Jesus because His disciples weren’t following the tradition of ceremonial hand washing.
At first glance, that sounds like a conversation about hygiene.
It’s not.
The issue was never dirty hands.
The issue was what had become attached to God’s truth.
The issue was spiritual syncretism.
A fancy phrase for something surprisingly common: blending God’s truth with ideas, beliefs, traditions, or practices that don’t actually belong together.
Adding something to the gospel that was never meant to be there.
The thing that struck me most wasn’t what the Pharisees were upset about.
It was what they ignored.
Matthew 14 happens immediately before this confrontation.
Take a second and think about everything they had just witnessed.
Jesus fed thousands of people with five loaves and two fish.
Jesus walked on water.
Peter stepped out of a boat and walked toward Him.
Crowds were being healed simply by touching the edge of His garment.
Miracles.
Healing.
Provision.
Transformation.
The power of God on full display.
Yet somehow they skipped over all of it.
They bypassed every miracle and every testimony to argue about a tradition.
If I’m honest, that convicted me.
Not because I’ve ever confronted someone about ceremonial washing rituals.
Because I’ve realized how easy it is to become distracted by things that ultimately don’t matter while completely missing what God is doing right in front of me.
The Pharisees had become so attached to their traditions that they couldn’t recognize God moving outside of them.
That’s a terrifying thought.
Especially for people like me who genuinely love theology, study, structure, and doing things “the right way.”
The longer I follow Jesus, the more I realize legalism isn’t just about rules.
It’s about control.
It’s the belief that if I can just perfect the formula, I’ll somehow guarantee the outcome.
It’s wanting certainty more than trust.
It’s wanting predictability more than relationship.
For years I swung between two extremes.
One version of me thought everything was a demon.
Every inconvenience was spiritual warfare.
Every setback was an attack.
Every strange feeling required immediate investigation.
I was constantly looking for hidden spiritual explanations behind everything.
Then I swung to the opposite side.
Everything was grace.
Everything was understandable.
Everything was excusable.
Nothing needed confrontation.
Nothing needed discernment.
Nothing needed examination.
Looking back now, both extremes had something in common.
Neither required much wisdom.
One blamed everything on darkness.
The other ignored it entirely.
Neither left much room for discernment, maturity, or dependence on the Holy Spirit.
One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that not everything spiritual is godly.
That sentence would have confused an earlier version of me.
I assumed that if something felt spiritual, sounded spiritual, or talked about spiritual things, it must automatically be good.
Scripture teaches otherwise.
The enemy has never had a problem disguising counterfeit things as truth.
The real question is never whether something sounds spiritual.
The question is always: what is the source?
That realization forced me to revisit some things I once considered harmless.
Including astrology.
Now before my fellow Scorpios come for me, hear me out.
There was a season of my life where being a Scorpio became part of my personality.
Not just something I was born under.
Something I identified with.
I would explain my reactions through it.
My stubbornness.
My intensity.
My emotions.
My habits.
It became a lens through which I understood myself.
The problem wasn’t that I knew my zodiac sign.
The problem was that I was allowing something other than God to help define who I was.
I was consulting a horoscope more often than I was consulting Scripture.
I was asking stars to explain me instead of asking the One who created them.
That realization was uncomfortable.
Not because I was secretly devoted to astrology.
Because it exposed something deeper.
We all look somewhere for identity.
Some people find it in personality tests.
Some people find it in politics.
Some people find it in achievement.
Some people find it in relationships.
Some people find it in spiritual experiences.
The question isn’t whether we look somewhere.
The question is where.
Spiritual syncretism rarely arrives dramatically.
It doesn’t usually kick the front door down.
It slips in quietly.
A little compromise here.
A little mixture there.
A little “Jesus plus this.”
A little “Jesus plus that.”
Until eventually we’ve built a faith that sounds Christian but is actually rooted in something else.
That’s what makes it dangerous.
The wrong addition eventually creates subtraction.
When you add the wrong thing, you eventually lose the right thing.
Jesus tells the Pharisees they had made the Word of God powerless through their traditions.
That phrase stopped me in my tracks.
Imagine loving religion so much that you accidentally mute God.
Imagine being so committed to preserving tradition that you miss transformation.
Imagine standing face to face with the Messiah and being more concerned with rules than relationship.
Then I realized something uncomfortable.
I don’t have to imagine it.
I’ve done versions of it myself.
Every time I cared more about appearances than heart transformation.
Every time I prioritized being right over being loving.
Every time I substituted certainty for trust.
Every time I wanted formulas instead of faith.
Every time I tried to control what only God could carry.
The beautiful part is that God’s response wasn’t condemnation.
It was invitation.
That’s what I love about Matthew 14.
Peter didn’t walk on water because he mastered a religious system.
He walked on water because Jesus invited him.
Come.
One word.
An invitation.
I’ve been thinking lately about how many of us are really good at obeying commands but struggle with invitations.
Tell us exactly what to do and we’ll create a checklist.
Tell us exactly what not to do and we’ll create boundaries.
Invite us into trust?
Invite us into surrender?
Invite us into relationship?
That’s harder.
You can’t control an invitation.
You can only accept it.
Maybe that’s why this whole passage has been lingering in my heart.
Not because God is asking me to become more religious.
Not because He’s asking me to become suspicious of everything.
Not because He’s trying to make my world smaller.
He’s asking me to trust Him more completely.
To stop adding things to what only Jesus can be.
To stop searching for certainty in places that were never meant to provide it.
To stop building my identity around labels that cannot save me.
To stop confusing spiritual with holy.
To stop mistaking tradition for truth.
To stop believing I need Jesus plus something else.
At the end of the day, spiritual syncretism begins with a subtle assumption that Jesus is insufficient.
That we need a little extra guidance.
A little extra wisdom.
A little extra control.
A little extra certainty.
Yet the gospel keeps bringing me back to the same conclusion.
Jesus is enough.
Enough truth.
Enough wisdom.
Enough security.
Enough identity.
Enough grace.
Enough power.
Enough hope.
And honestly?
That realization didn’t leave me feeling corrected.
It left me feeling relieved.
Because carrying a faith built on additions is exhausting.
Carrying a faith built on Christ is freedom.