Jesus or nothing

I noticed that there are so many different people eating at our shop today. Some have takeaways and others sit at the tables to have a relaxing meal. Different people with different tastes.  I live in a country with cultural diversity. I see and communicate with people of different cultures who speak different languages daily. That’s the way it is where I live and I wouldn’t want to live any other way. I know that South Africa has many problems and there’s a lot of propaganda making things seem very confusing most of the time. There are people who emigrate and others who threaten to emigrate. There are people who speak about having separate states which would house the different cultures.

From the beginning of the Bible people of the same culture couldn’t get along. Cain and Abel were the first brothers – ever – and Cain murdered Abel. Jacob and Esau were twins and they had a huge problem with birthrights and blessings. Jacob had to flee because Esau wanted to kill him. Luckily they eventually made peace with each other. Joseph’s brothers wanted to kill him because he was his father’s favorite and they were getting sick and tired of all the dreams he was having about them bowing down to him. Fortunately for them they settled on selling him as a slave and he ended up saving the whole family when there was a famine. I don’t even want to get started on Moses and God’s people in the desert. That was a story of epic proportions. They just could not agree on anything. Even when God did  miracles like part the sea for them to pass through and then drown  the entire Egyptian army in that same sea, they still doubted and couldn’t just be happy following Moses. Around and around and around they went in the desert for forty years until God eventually allowed them to enter the promised land.

Then of course different cultural groups lived apart and were constantly at war with each other. Think of Israel in the time of King Saul and David who were at war with the Philistines. They were two different cultural groups. Obviously the Israelites were God’s chosen people. But even among themselves there were a lot of problems and when Saul became jealous of David he went all out to try and kill him. After Saul died and David became king, David’s son Absalom with a whole army went after David and trying to kill him. What a mess! And they were all Israelites!

It seems that the times when the Jews were in exile in other countries were the times when they actually didn’t fight as much with each other. Eventually in 1948 Israel once again became a homeland to the Jews and now of course there are terrible differences between the Jews and Palestinians but that’s another story altogether.

Why can’t we all live together and accept each other’s differences instead of being seeing the differences as obstacles. If we do what Jesus told us to do we will be able to live together. Matthew 28:19 – 20, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.” Acts 1:8, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you: and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Why don’t the people who say they are Christians just do what Jesus told them to do instead of fighting over differences in doctrines of different churches. Why don’t we all just embrace the teachings of Jesus and get over ourselves and our insecurities. We shouldn’t be worried about what people are going to say about us or think about us. We have to decide whether we are going to serve God with everything we have or if we’re not going to. There’s only one way, there’s no such thing as soft religion. You are either going to be a Jesus freak or nothing. Revelation 3:16 says, “So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold not hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.”

Let us work at putting our differences aside and let us go all out and follow the Messiah!