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-- THE CALLING OF LEVI
Luke
5:27-32
After these things
He went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting
at the tax office. And He said to him, "Follow Me."
So he left all, rose up, and followed Him.
Then Levi gave Him a great feast in his own house. And there were a great number of tax collectors and others who sat down with them. And their scribes and the Pharisees complained against His disciples, saying, "Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?"
Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."
As is made plain in many places in the New Testament, people do not become Christians because of clever arguments or technical knowledge, but rather because they are called -- because, as John explains, they metaphorically hear and recognize the voice of Jesus in their hearts, and respond, like sheep to their shepherd (John 10:4).
The miraculous nature of that calling is demonstrated here, when the hard-headed tax collector, Simon, immediately responds to Jesus' request to Follow me! by rising up, leaving all and following him.
The "religious" leaders of the time, however, the scribes and Pharisees, appear to have been deaf to the words of Jesus, and totally blind to their own faults, although they were quick to spot the shortcomings of the sinners around them.
The calling to become a Christian is not an invitation to believe a creed, to dress in a certain way, to observe various days, to take part in esoteric ceremonies or pray "n" times day -- it is instead about changing the way we treat other people, about coming to see ourselves as we really are, about admitting sins and coming to repentance.
Despite the claims of various "religions" to the contrary, Christianity is indeed the ultimate religion, the "meta" or highest possible form of religion -- because it is about the most mundane of matters, of people loving God and loving other people as much as they love themselves, as God intended from the beginning (1 John 3:11). There is nothing more "meta" than this.
This fundamental point is stressed over and over again by Paul to Christians in Galatia who had been turned aside into a religion of works (Galatians 5:15,22 6:15), to a perverted or counterfeit version of the true gospel (Galatians 1:6-9).