Life on Snow Hill

A comment I received this morning got me to thinking a little bit about religious hate (Thanks Betsy!) and that being the cause for wars.  Why do Christians, who are trying to do right, get blamed for everything wrong in the world?  Maybe I should say ‘true’ Christians.  A true Christian will hate certain things.  But that is not the cause for wars as this reader surmised.

What does a true Christian hate?  A true Christian hates sin, simply put.  What is sin?  The most simple place to start is the Ten Commandments.  Surely everyone is aware of the Ten Commandments?  You know…Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not commit adultery…  Shall I go on?  Honor thy father and thy mother, thou shalt have no other gods before me.  Oops..I guess that last one is too offensive?  There are no other gods.  There is only one true, living God.

So again I ask, why are Christians blamed for the wrong in this world?  A true Christian doesn’t hate a person – we are told to love our enemies, in fact.  A true Christian hates the sin in this world.  Everyone commits sin – no one is perfect, except Jesus Christ himself.  A true Christian will ask forgiveness for a sin that he or she commits.  He will not live in that sin.  So why are we to blame for what’s wrong in this world?

A true Christian will hate another religion because it is teaching error.  To teach that error is also a sin – it is filled with lies.  But a Christian will not start a war based on that hate.  A Christian will try to teach the truth as laid out in God’s Word.  Wars are not started over this kind of hate.

The kind of hate that wars are started over is the kind that the Muslims displayed when they killed 3,000 people in my country.  It is this kind of religious hate that is taught to children growing up that wars are started over.  In the Islam religion, if one doesn’t believe as you do, they are infidels and deserve to be killed.  Remember – they are the ones calling for Jihad.

Yes, you read that right. And you’re not seeing double, either. It seems like all this kinda weird stuff happens somewhere in India. When I was told about it by a coworker, the first question I asked was, “So are they worshipping this baby?” Sure enough, the answer was yes.

There have been hundreds of people visit the baby and her parents. They come to ‘touch her feet out of respect and receive blessings.’ I’m just curious which blessings they think they are receiving. They think she is some kind of reincarnation of some Hindu goddess. There was another baby born a while back that had a tail. They worshipped that one too because they thought he was some sort of reincarnated god. I don’t get why these people have so many ‘gods’ for so many different purposes. There is one God, for everything. I’ve always wondered which of their ‘gods’ saves their souls and takes them to Heaven… I’ve never heard anything about that one.

Today is December 23rd, 2007.  It’s Sunday.  We’ll be going to my Granny’s house on my mom’s side.  Chicken ‘n Dumplin’s, mashed potatoes, ham…Mmm…  Although spending time with your family around a good meal is a great thing, it’s not quite what Christmas is all about.

Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th, we know that.  But at the same time, we don’t now exactly when he was born.  I don’t know who picked it, but December 25th is when we celebrate His birth.

Christmas is a time to remember how our Salvation was brought to be.  It’s a time to remember how Jesus was born of a virgin.  It’s a time to remember how great a child this was – He was teaching the priests in the temple at age 12!

So while you’re eating as well as you did at Thanksgiving, and opening all your gifts and getting things you’ve always wanted, and things you never would’ve picked out for your worse enemy, remember to step back, take a breath, and remember what Christmas is really all about.

Merry Christmas!