In Houston on June 1, 2002
The Trinitarian God of Christianity as revealed in Jesus Christ is a social God of love, and is totally unlike Jehovah, a monad. Such monads are communal gods. They belong to a particular community only. No wonder Jehovah makes the Israelites fight against the Cannanites and even makes them kill them mercilessly. On the other hand, the trinity is the ultimate unity in love. The love of this God is unconditional. He gives rain to both righteous and sinners.
John, the apostle, rightly said, "God is love". Those who believe in this God can easily be identified-- not by words, but by deeds of love. He who claims to believe in this God and hates his brother is a liar. A-humanism (nirmanushyathwam), which is ill-treating human beings, is a worse evil than Atheism (nireeswarathwam), which is the belief that God doesn't exist.
Well, if God loves all alike, then what is the church for? God loves all people in the world -- both the people within the church and the people outside the church. The church is a group of people who have taken a responsibility on themselves-- to be a visible representative of God in the world. Jesus is the savior of all humankind -- of those within the church, and those outside the church. The mission of the church is to "Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit". Our mission is to make all the nations of the world the disciples of Jesus Christ.
We see how Jesus sent his disciples with a mission in Mathew's Gospel chapter 10. He said, "I send you as my father sent me." He also told them, "I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves." Ours is a world of wolves. The number of people killed in the last one century is more than all the people killed in the 19 preceding centuries. We have to go to such a world with a mission of love. When I visited Collosseum in Rome I could see the dry bones of the martyrs kept in catacombs. They were willing to die for Jesus. In Russia, I could see three kinds of churches: closed ones, broken down ones, and the ones converted to museums.
Today in this third millennium, Christ is calling us to sacrifice ourselves. We have a choice: we can be wolves torturing and killing the sheep. Or, we can be sheep, willing to die. Will we join the group of wolves or the group of sheep? Wolves are never satisfied. They keep on consuming more and more without having any care for others. On the other hand, the sheep, with a vow of poverty, are happy and thankful with what they have. I would call this kind of poverty which they willingly accept "evangelical poverty". This is opposed to the structural poverty we see around us. There are millions of people around the world without enough food and clothing. This poverty is not their choice, but it is forced upon them. Structural poverty is evil, whereas evangelical poverty is good.
Back to Contents
Back to Contents
No comments:
Post a Comment