I Never Knew You:
The Business of God and The War on “Unbelievers”.
We were shocked the other day as we attended a black Church when the pastor astonishingly imparted some precious wisdom to fellow Christians to effectively help them make it out of the struggles they could have been going through. The idea the pastor brilliantly shared consisted in adding value to other people’s life in order to receive blessings that would allow us to eventually breakthrough. Powerful!
Now this was truly surprising since it was way far from the radically different mediocrity we are used to in Churches. Especially on Sunday services where there seem to be room only for a mediocre mindset of people who seem to exclusively care for “blessings” to display at any cost. Without even wondering how one could use the Word to get those “blessings”. “It’s by grace.” We are over and over reminded. Not even by faith, since we believe in the power of faith. Which to some degree requires some steps to be taken.
We are genuinely troubled to see how the teachings of apostle Paul perverted the gospel of Jesus Christ for those who ended up more concerned with the business of small miracles, demons casting out, tongue speaking, etc. While maintaining people in utter ignorance, selfishness and an appalling lack of love for one’s neighbor. They love Jesus. Some even claim to be married to him. Both men and women... Showing gratitude to fellow humans, for instance, is something they happily got rid of because “all the glory is to God”.
In this situation, you can’t expect a devoted Christian to be considering adding values to other people’s life. She would almost instantly find some obscure recommendation in one of apostle Paul’s letters to...the Gentiles not to deal with those she will happily deem as...unbelievers. Pastors would even go as far as to recommend to their brainwashed sheep to steal whatever belongs to so-called unbelievers as they feel entitled to possess the gates of their enemy. When those who are deemed as unbelievers become enemies to them according to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who by the way never left a single “Christian” on this planet, is not exactly clear. We even wonder if among such unbelievers our fellow Christians count the Magi from the Persian priesthood who paid homage to the infant Jesus that they were able to localize with their...magi-cal powers when Herod and the Romans would not. Those priests who chose to worship a strikingly ordinary baby before the Jews who were trying to kill him and who successfully achieved their goal with the very Gentiles who now happen to be the uncompromising spiritual heirs of Christianity by the same apostle Paul. So much so that today Western tourists in the Holy Land would even question Arabic-looking Palestinians in a Church about their “conversion” experience. When nobody would be surprised to see blond-haired and blue-eyed people in Israel calling themselves Jews, while discriminating against the darker-skinned Jews. Nobody would be surprised to see these folks even when they would probably be mocking Jesus Christ…Somehow we think, though, that such a misunderstanding is understandable. These folks were there in the times of Jesus and Jesus did not like them either (Mark 7:25-27 KJV). He must had known without a shadow of doubt they would eventually kill him and take over his Church (Matt 13:24-25 KJV).
This whole idea of a misunderstood grace that Christians are misled into believing by apostle Paul is truly a disturbing one. We wonder how Paul came up with his notion of grace. Grace, in our view, is the freedom from the bondage of the Law which Jesus did not came to abolish but to fix by removing the fatality of its dominion while allowing the remission of sins. A relief for those who would choose to be part of his system or testament (Matthew 26:28 KJV). It certainly should not be conceived as an unlimited volume of opportunities, especially for unrepentant sinners.
While we show tremendous involvement in the matters that pertain to a Church where we pretend to serve God, just as we fail to cloth the poor without a coat that we accuse of being cursed, unless it’s for the sake of publicity, just as we resolutely refuse to take any humanly valuable step to show some love to those who do not look like us, speak like us or pray like us, then despite our fervent commitment tainted with an uncontrollable need to judge instead, we are blatantly reminded by the promise of Christ: I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work...iniquity (lawlessness). Matt 7:23.
IBK,
Ordinary citizen.
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As of Christ, we do not accuse. Neither do we judge, nor condemn. We do not stone. We do not curse. We bless our enemies and persecutors. While we let the dead bury their own dead, as we pick up our Cross, we revive our loved ones from lethal errors.