"Pizzaonia Emerging" Courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, curator (C)2009
Christianity reasonable? Are you kidding?
If there ever was a more radical message than the message that Jesus of Nazareth preached and taught while he walked this earth, we certainly don’t know about it. His message was not accepted in his time, and to this day still hasn’t been completely accepted in our time.
Unfortunately, what we have seen evolving over the last 2000 plus years is a watered-down version of the original message.
Let’s take the subject of war*. Is it even reasonable to believe that war could exist if Christians followed the original Christian message?
Today war* is justified and defined as a reasonable means of self-defense. Now we take self-defense for granted, but if you take the original message literally self-defense was not an option. We were to turn the other cheek and face our enemies in a loving nonviolent way.
Killing us would be easy since we would offer no resistance. In place of the sword we would offer love to our enemy. Many of us would die but in the long run our enemies would be overcome by our loving nonviolence, and we would restore peace to those who remained.
Many of us would have perished, but our reward would be heaven since we lived and died as Jesus asked us to. How many Christians practice this message today? How many of us have the commitment to the Christian faith to practice this message of love and nonviolence? The answer is obvious - look at the state of the world around us.
Let’s move off the extremes and simply talk about everyday life. Homelessness could not exist if we were truly Christians. I know there are many programs that help the homeless – and many of those follow the Christian message closely.
However, for most of us, the homeless are a state of life, and we accept it as an everyday phenomenon. We don’t like it; we wish it would go away, but we do little about it. This is diametrically opposed to the Christian message. Homelessness could not exist if we were truly Christian.
I know this sounds extreme but Jesus was extreme. His message was delivered softly and with love but there’s no mistaking its intent. Christianity was not meant to be reasonable. It was a radical solution meant to bring love into the world.
Add to this the notion that God the father was a loving God who knew each and every one of us personally, and loved us beyond anything we can imagine.
Then imagine this itinerant carpenter that we call the Messiah claiming to know this God, not only personally, but to love him as his father -no more than that – to love his so personally he would call the God of heaven and earth ” Daddy.”
Can you imagine the shock people felt when they heard his message? No wonder they didn’t trust him. He was diametrically opposed to everything they had ever heard about their God. Here was a God of personal love, not a God of vengeance.
If this is still radical to us today imagine how radical this was to the people of his time.
We often hear that Jesus is not relevant today. As the late Andrew Greeley said, “He is not only not relevant in our time he was not relevant in his time. After all, they did crucify him as a common criminal.” This is hardly the fate of someone who was respected and loved.
So today most of us practice our Christianity in a very reasonable way. We are very nice people. We try to respect each other and partially live the Christian life. Unfortunately, this misses the mark. Most of us cannot admit this, but just look at the record. It speaks for itself.
So there is no misunderstanding, we include ourselves as part of the “reasonable Christians,” but to also be clear- let’s stop kidding ourselves.
Brother Franco
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Mark 10 -21 - Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me. |
*The Church's Just War Theory - http://catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0182.html
In our next "Ask Brother Giovanni," Sister Veronica answers Brother Franco with her concept of what it means to be a reasonable Christian.
