Thursday, December 30, 2010

The One About Jesus

My wife and I use to work for a private boarding school and a lot of the students were from China, Korea or some other crazy far away country. It was always interesting to talk with the students about their beliefs because they were often radically different than mine. It often blew me away that if we were sitting in their home countries that we wouldn't have been able to have the religious conversation. That the governments had banned my religion from their country. That I would be arrested and put in jail for the simple fact of witnessing to them about Jesus.

I started to wonder why some countries, schools and people in general feel so threatened by the message of Jesus. What is so scary to them about this message that they try to snuff it out. In "Guerrilla Lovers" Vince Antonucci helps me to understand why this may be.

He talks about how when Jesus used the illustration of our faith being like a mustard seed that the actual act of planting a mustard seed in a garden was considered illegal. That farmers, gardeners and anyone with a green thumb was banned from planting a mustard seed in a field with any other plants. The government had noticed that all it would take was for one healthy mustard seed to take root and overtime that plant would take over the entire field. The seed would reproduce like crazy and there was very little anyone could do about it once it grew.

I feel this is why our religion is considered so threatening. The radical message of love that Jesus brought is contagious. Jesus called into question those who were cheating the citizens and the hypocritical religious leaders. He came to serve those around Him. When we model this love to others...it threatens everything individuals and countries have seen as normal. Should we really be surprised that the message of Jesus is threatening?

No comments:

Post a Comment