Following Commandments

Jesus, and other great Christian leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., never addressed homosexuality. So the Christian right looks to Hebrew men long dead, skewing their words to purport hate.

The Christian right applies to themselves: anti-abortion, anti-gay, and anti-any country besides America, as their label of choice. In doing so they have made those issues more important than God, thus sinning and like everyone else, deserving only of hell and by grace granted Heaven. Martin Luther King Jr. great as he was, perhaps applied himself too much to civil rights and for peace. We forget that, as Christians, we must focus on Jesus first, issues second. We do this because we want to see our actions create change, but we forget that Ruth never saw her actions played out generations later allowing Jesus' birth.

Case in point, what does Jesus call us to do? Mark 12:28-34 states that loving God above all else and loving neighbors as you love yourself fulfills Jesus' call. Jesus uses a term at the end of the passage to define the reward for following these commandments: the Kingdom of God. But to see the Kingdom of God we must be born again.

How can we truly be born again if we constantly make anti-gay rights or gay rights or food or our families or our schoolwork, civil rights, peace, or praise music our main issue? If we define ourselves with anything but Jesus we fail to see the Kingdom of God and even if we do follow those commandments we can't enter into Heaven. Jesus said rich people will struggle to get into Heaven because they define themselves with money and these issues provide the same disservice to us as money.

What does the Kingdom of God resemble? Perhaps Louis the XIV's absolute monarchy? Probably not. Brian McLaran, in his book The Secret Message of Jesus, introduces the Kingdom of God as Jesus ruling, intimately involving himself in our lives and creating laws that we can or cannot follow. In brief, Jesus does not force anyone to believe in him, but he doesn't abandon us either.

If we want to achieve God's purpose for our lives we must focus on God and practice our faith through love, not on what we interpret God wants us to do. God told us what to do: love everyone like yourself. Dr. King told us the problem: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere". Sometime I hope those two commandments can be applied to the problems by everyone.