Saturday, February 16, 2013

Judge not...

Why the hectoring tone when evangelicals wish to persuade some to walk the narrow path? The Message is always couched in dire warnings of doom and disaster, not juts for the deaf individual, but to their entire families. Everyday we are threatened with career-ending disaster because we do not believe. We are reminded that our plans will count for nought because we have not publicly invoked the name of the Almighty. We are warned that on the Day of Judgment, our judgment will indeed be harsh and we will suffer damnation for all eternity. We are castigated for being "bad" Christians and that it is all our fault for not turning every day into a day of worship and fellowship. In short, unless we heed The Call, we are not fit for heaven; we are the instruments of the devil and shall suffer a fate worse than death.

Social media, instead of making the conversation more civil, has only made things worse. Now, those active on facebook or Twitter are incessantly bombarded with requests to "like" a page or to "like" a post or else hellfire and brimstone awaits us. It used to be that if one wished to demonstrate their Christian values, they went to church and worshiped with fellow-Christians. Today, one must not only do that, one must constantly reaffirm his faith lest he be judged here on Earth before The Day of Judgment comes around. Some of my Christian brethren have become Judge, Jury and Executioner in their zeal to win souls for Christ.

Do they not realise that it is counter-productive to promise hell if one does what one does everyday? Many are confident in their faith in the Almighty and see no reasons why they should proclaim it every time someone demands proof. They do their Christian duty and they live as they believe The Christ would have wanted them to live. They do not wear their Christianity in their sleeves but it is pretty apparent in the manner they carry themselves and how they do what they do. They too, it seems, are for hell because they are insufficiently demonstrative of the their faith. Is Christianity being used as a weapon even against Christians?

There is a cohort of self-confessed monitors in the Christian faith. It seems that their principal role in life is to keep tabs on who is not sufficiently Christian to go by that name. They monitor our words, our decisions, our relationships and even our food and drink. They comment on what we watch or read or listen to with a judgmental mien. They take time out of their busy schedules to harangue and hector to get us back on the "right" path. They refuse to accept that the stricture "judge not, lest you be judged" applies to them too. They are busy yanking out the speck in our eyes that they ignore the plank in theirs'. Theirs is a harsh Christianity, fundamentalist in the interpretation of scripture and absolute in its ruthlessness against the weaknesses of the flesh.

Many of them would scream bloody murder if the State attempted to regulate how, where and when they could worship, but they see nothing contradictory in using the machinery of the State, including the Constitution or the courts, to impose their religious interpretations of secular matters on the rest of the nation. Perhaps it is time that Christians took back their faith from those that would wish to use it as a weapon. It is time we went back to the fundamentals of our faith: brotherhood, family and social wellbeing. If we are to worship together for the good of not only the individual but of the State, then we should do so without purporting to stand in judgment of our weaker co-religionists. Instead, we should go out of our way to offer words of encouragement and help to those who have fallen short of the glory of God.

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