Let Us Be Real

What am I thinking these days is how some of us have gone far from the loving Gospel of Jesus Christ. We have forgotten that the essence of the Gospel is love- no one has greater love than this to give His life for His friend. Truly Jesus died for us. He considered us as a friend, while we considered Him as our enemy.

He did not condemned people and neither did He condemned you and me when we were in the world. In contrary to Jesus; what we are very good at today is condemning others who are different than us or those whose belief are different than us. We preach the Gospel with our lips, not with our hearts and therefore, we are confused too often how to treat properly those people from different race, religion, gender etc.

It’s very easy to judge others without knowing the real story. I always say that behind every eyes is a story hidden and we have to try to read that story rather than easily judging the people involved.

For instance, we want to share the Love of Christ with Muslims. We brag about our outreaches in the Muslim world, and how we make the Muslims come to Christ. But when it comes to really showing love to them, what we do is to “hollywoodize” the gospel. We do as if all the Muslims are the terrorists and even some call them the beast etc. Some of us even call the war in Iraq, the battle of good versus evil!!!

What do we reach by preaching such messages? What do we achieve by sowing hate while we theoretically speak about love! Some of us -not all of us- do not want to bring the saving message of Jesus to them, but we want to Europeanize or Americanize others and make them dress, eat, talk and church like us.

We judge people easily. Once I was speaking with a my fellow pentecostal brother, and he was saying that the Arab Christians should not use the word Allah in their church services? I asked him, what should they use then? What word shall they use? Because in the Arabic Bible, Genesis 1:1 is written “in the beginning Allah created the heaven and earth etc”. He said no! That word is wrong, they have to use the Jewish word for God. I told him, the English word for God is also not Jewish! How do you then justify that? No, he said that is a different issue!

What do we do then in using the Name Jesus? That is also not a jewish name? The real name is Yeshuah! I think what matters is the real essence, the real meaning and the value we attach to the words we use. What shall an Arab Christian use for the name of God? A German, Latin, Greek or American English word? Did you know that a born again, pentecostal tongue praying, fire preaching Arab Christian, when he wants to say God is Great, he will say Allah Akbar? Now deal with it!!!!!

Please I plead with you in the Name of Jesus, let us be open-minded, more than that, let us open our hearts. Let us imitate Christ, how He spoke to the Samaritan women and with His love and gentleness persuade her of His Gospel.

Let us be like the good samaritan who did not regard gender, race, background but helped the man in need, while the Pharisee and the Levite who were preaching the very message of God, did not have time to be a real ‘neighbor’.

We are easily judging others! Please, let us be real. Let us be honest to one another. Any form of fanaticism is wrong whether it is Christian, Hindu, Jewish or Islamic. Don’t forget what we have done to humanity in the name of Church, Christianity and the Cross. Believe me, I am a born again Christian, I pray every day to Jesus. I love Him. He is my Savior and Lord. Let us be like Him and practice the gospel, just as He did. Let us love our neighbors. In place of judging them, let us show love, compassion and respect to our fellow brothers and sisters. Let us preach the love of Christ with our lives, in such a way that that Love which Christ has implanted in us will convict people of sin and wrongdoings! Let us stop talking and giving lecture about the Light, instead let us shine the light of the world upon every man and woman. I guarantee you that even in the Church today there is hidden discrimination and prejudices.

Let us stop this today! Let us begin now! Let us begin with ourselves!