Testing...Something I wrote last Feb

I have had attacks of self-righteousness. I have judged other people’s faith on the basis of my standards, forgetting the fact that every personal relationship with Jesus Christ is sui generis (i.e., one of a kind).

God has been impressing one important thing in my heart and I am very much thankful for it. It is that whatever church, whatever denomination, wherever you are, your obsession must be with Jesus Christ, not with specific religious affiliations, traditions and rituals that can potentially endanger our personal relationship with Him. There is the possibility of being stuck, of doing for the sake of doing, of praying for the sake of praying, and in the process, of reducing our faith to a sort of checklist – what to do and what not to do, what we have fulfilled and what we haven’t – thinking that when we have the tasks in our list accomplished, we are well okay in our faith and in God’s eyes. (see 1 Corinthians 10:12)

Drawing from Stuart Hall, a sociologist, I have come to realize that meanings are never really fixed and are generated in different practices, that is why one thing makes sense for someone but not to the other. I believe it is also true in the case of both our personal and collective relationship with the Lord.

Churches are never and will never be perfect in and by themselves; they become so, only if members are able to find within themselves that precious meaning, their raison d’etre, the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact is, they are also social organizations/institutions, which take lives of their own once they are established. We shape them but are also shaped by them. They go in particular directions, which, we, as members, are sometimes unable to control. Most of the time, we are unaware of those limits and this unawareness sometimes make us victims of blind faith, when we, as individual members, place our whole faith on them instead of fixing our gaze on the Lord.

More often than not, we fail to see these things or better yet, actually call into question our own prejudices and biases. We are quick to judge. Like me, I’m sure there are times when we dismiss certain practices as senseless and meaningless, and worse, render them inferior than ours.

The very assertion which I want to make is quite simple. It is precisely that we are brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of our religious affiliations – church, denomination, cell groups, or however one wishes to call the groups we belong to in our spiritual journey. They are a blessing to us. They are God-sent and in the same manner, we are God-sent to them - to the members of the groups we belong to. God placed us in them for reasons - some quite clear, some still obscure, but by faith, we still continue to hope and believe (Hebrews 11:1)

However, I believe, we must not be obsessed with them; we must also have the ability to do some form of autocritique, to ask ourselves at some point if it is truly Christ holding the bond, if the practices, the rules, the regulations are effective in terms of bringing us closer to God. While certain unique practices hold us together as social beings, we must never forget what, rather, WHO ultimately knits us together – the Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the Cross for our sake. For he said in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them”

Lastly, to conclude this reflection, let us always remember that God created us for discipleship – to train us to become obedient to His will, but let us not forget that He also called us to be radical in practicing our faith. Jesus himself was radical in fulfilling the will of the Father.

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Colossians 4:6 - "Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you know how should respond to each one"