THEY WILL KNOW US BY OUR LOVE

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

          Welcome back. Let’s talk about Buddhists.

          It’s embarrassing to admit, but Buddhists appear to be the only people of faith who are kind, loving, and accepting. We Christians were meant to be such people of faith, but are we?

          We had it all at first. The carrion world reeked with violence, domination, imperialism, corruption, bigotry, and greed. 

          We Christians had our Lord and his gospel. Unto all the world we went with the message of the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, of love and peace, of common fellowship at the dinner table.  The Way must have come as a word too good to be true to those who heard it, for we were nothing like the world.

          Furthermore, we had our Lord’s presence, the spirit of the living God loving within us. We had a vision and philosophy of unconditional love, of forgiveness, of kindness, and of joy. 

         Having God we had everything and needed nothing.  

          I heard a seminary professor say that for the first two hundred years of its existence on earth, there has been no record of a Christian fighting in the Roman army. Turning the other cheek was looking past revenge toward something greater.

          Somewhere, somehow, it all frayed, then unraveled, leaving a few threads to hold the faith together. Believers fought among themselves about how to worship Jesus and forgot to be like Jesus.  Believers made worldliness about sex, pleasure, and—if you can believe it—the love of money and power.

          Sex and pleasure make it easier to endure the world when it turns to crap, but money and power drives everything indecent. 

          History shows us how money and power has turned many Christians into rapacious fiends like those European Christians who murdered millions of Native Americans for Jesus and gold. 

         That’s just one time.

         Moreover, the love of money and power drives indecent ministers into preaching that lucre and empire are signs of God’s blessings. These modern indulgences extol the virtue of war, torture, and the gospel of wealth.

          It was never supposed to be this way for us, the Christians.

          If we become a nation of ascetics and have not love, how are we different from the world?  We are the world and joyless too. Indeed, if for any reason we, the Christians, make others into strangers, and then treat them with vile cruelty--that’s the everlasting sin of all cultures and governments.

          What the world needs is love. It needs a faith that believes in the power of unconditional love. It yearns for a people of faith who pray for peace and work for justice. 

          Thank God, there is such a people of faith. I wish it were us.

          Nobody ever heard of a Jim Crow Buddhist, a radical Buddhist terrorist, a Buddhist empire, Buddhist lust for gold, colonial Buddhist missionaries, and when was the last time anyone saw a slasher Buddhist film?

          So let us, the Christians refuse to get self righteous on the Muslims. When we start following Christ, and the world knows us by our love, then we can whisper to God Almighty, “We’re as good as the Buddhists, Lord.”

          Indeed, if they know us by our love, we may not think that way anymore. We'll be too busy following Jesus.

          Next time I’ll write about Christian politicians.

          Blessings…