I mostly think that the word Christian, is someone who’s like Christ. In other words, it could be Christ’s ambassador, a torch bearer, a partaker in the life of Christ and someone who had moulded his or her in form of Christ. It’s very beautiful when we mostly address ourselves as Christians, but we have never lived a life meant for those who are called Christians.
The life of Christ, was in no way a life of pride, avarice, rancor, pretender, hate and so many lifestyles that depicts the life Christ had lived. The teachings of Christ was made specially on love for one another, but the reverse is a life spent in jealousy and envy. In the words we often swallow in the Bible, we read how Christ had compassion on many. We read about how Christ treated the destitute, we also have read how Christ even dine and sat with people we acclaim sinners. It’s that same Christ, that had taught us to do the same as he had done.
Mahatma Ghandi, could not be blamed why he had taken to be addressed as “holy pagan”. He had succinctly watched closely those who call themselves Christians and saw that they are no equal to what Christ said to be a Christian living. A Christian who can kill and snatch his brother’s property. A Christian who betrays another. A Christian who denies his fellow brother his right. A Christian who plans to terminate his fellow Christian’s appointment. These are league of Christians, Ghandi vehemently refute to be taken as.
When I see most of us Christians parade ourselves in the glory of children of God, I cried with a bitter heart. One who had taken the name as a Christian has no single knowledge of what the Scripture is saying. One who moves with the tag of a Christian, doesn’t know any quotation from the Bible. Such are those, St. Jerome would often address as illiterates. They don’t know the Bible, how would they know the originator of it? You’re ignorant of the words of Christ, what makes you think, you’d know God?
It was the Church in Philippine, that St. Paul was reminding them the whole importance of reading and meditating on the Bible. They are Christians, not pagans. They are people who had accepted the words of God. But at the departure of St. Paul, they turned into another category of Christians. They came to form a clique that debunk and thwart the words of God. They saw the practising of Christian life a torn to their flesh. These are what Christians of today, turned into. Christians that serve two masters at a time (syncretism). People who would make a law, and heap it on those they think that are vulnerable (the Pharisees). I’ve no doubt to say, that Ghandi was right when he said “I love your Christ, but I hate your Christians”.
-Princewell Okwuoha.
