Mankind – The Living Message of Christ

There is a movement happening today in America and other nations, where agnostics and atheists create “a church for people who don’t believe in God”. They have speakers who get them excited and feeling good about themselves, empowering speakers who show that communities and fellowship can happen even without a pastor or religion. Is this a good thing? Some people say that it is. It empowers people, it helps people with their problems, they even have pot-luck suppers and feed the congregation of people who are at the meetings. But, this is not a church, at least not in the sense that it is a religious body of believers because it is not. These congregations don’t have a belief in a “supreme being”, they just believe in the morality of man.

Can mankind, regardless of their so-called race or skin color, be good and morally right? Yes, they can be for a while and I don’t discount the goodness of man when they want to be and act in this fashion. But, what is the natural tendency of man? What has happened in history, from time long past, when mankind is left to his or her own natural tendency in any situation? Few and far apart are those who are actually good and those who think of others above or beyond themselves. Taking historical facts which have been documented over the ages, even the “church” has committed acts of barbarism against other Christians and those of another faith when it suited their purpose.

Man is just as it is quoted from Proverbs chapter 6:14 “evil in his heart always”, without faith in God and the morality that faith brings into your life. Proverbs 6 has other things to say about people who don’t have God or faith in Him in their heart or their life:

12What are worthless and wicked people like?

They are constant liars,

13signaling their deceit with a wink of the eye,

a nudge of the foot, or the wiggle of fingers.

14Their perverted hearts plot evil,

and they constantly stir up trouble.

15But they will be destroyed suddenly,

broken in an instant beyond all hope of healing.

16There are six things the Lord hates—

no, seven things he detests:

17haughty eyes,

a lying tongue,

hands that kill the innocent,

18a heart that plots evil,

feet that race to do wrong,

19a false witness who pours out lies,

a person who sows discord in a family.

Proverbs 6: 12-19 (English Standard Version)

Mankind, regardless of the culture that he has lived in or the religion or lack of belief that he may have, doesn’t have the best of intentions in his life. At least not always. I am not trying to say that all of us (mankind), male or female, are evil because we are clearly not. If that were the case, then there would be a world like you see in those post-apocalyptic movies. We would’ve already destroyed most life on this planet.

But, we haven’t and that is why I believe that there is an inherent good in mankind and yet there is also a tendency for evil intent and these two natures are always at war with each other in each of us. God placed the goodness in our nature but the sin that came into the garden of Eden put the evil nature, the “virus” of being bad, into our ancestors and therefore in each of us. What was that sin? Disobedience. Rejecting the advice of a loving God and deciding to do what “I” want and what “I” think with be better for me.

There is no “I” in love and that is what God was trying to get his creation to realize. Love His commandments, showing that love by obeying Him and realizing that He has the best outcome for you already in place, if you will decide to follow His advice and follow Him. He can see all of your life from beginning to end and He knows what outcomes will be from the decisions that we make on our own versus the ones where we determine to follow His leading.

Choose a life that follows God’s wisdom and His ways as outlined in the Bible because there is far more wisdom contained in that one Book than in all of the rest of the library that man has created.

It has been through a tremendous fire with a lot of heat which is what did all of the damage to it. The fire was particularly hot but the safe was not breached, it seems that it was capable of still being locked even though the outside was scorched and then discarded. I see an analogy of our country and the state of religion in it.

Christians, whether black or white, have taken the heat from people who follow Islam and from people who don’t follow any religion at all. We have not been broken, we have not stopped being Christians but there are some who are discarding their belief in Jesus or their religion. Why is this happening?

Is it because of the state of our country and its economy? Is it because of the state of relations between the so-called “races” of people in our country? Now, before anyone gets all bent out of shape, the reason that I have races in quotes is because God did not make us this way! God created mankind! We are all the same race, whether your skin is white or black, yellow or brown or any shade between those. Our main difference is cultural. There are cultural differences between most everyone on earth regardless of where you may live.

We are brought up by our parents and grand-parents into a culture, regardless of where you live. You may be brought up in a community in Chicago or Detroit or New York, but your culture will be in line with those that you are around.

Christian’s, regardless of race, should follow Jesus’ example. He didn’t pay attention to the cultural norms of his people, He spoke to women and to Samaritans which other Jews actively avoided. He healed lepers, he touched them which no one in His culture would do. We are to be His hands, His eyes, His feet in our time because others need to know Him. How will they know about Him if we don’t take Him with us through our actions or our words?

How can we possibly fulfill the commission that Jesus gave us to take the gospel to every nation and tribe if we don’t do it? If our cultural differences keep us apart and separate us into “us” and “them”, how can we show each other the love of Christ?

At the beginning of this post there is a picture of a burned safe which had been discarded. It did what it was supposed to do because it protected the contents to the best of its ability from the fire. That is what Christians are supposed to be doing too…protecting others from the fire of hell by telling them about the love and forgiveness of God.

Then, telling them about what Jesus did for each of us regardless of our skin color or our race or our culture. He did it for all of us and if you need to know what “it” is I am going to tell you: He took the punishment and the torture of being apart from God as well as the punishment of the cross for our sins!

God loves each of us, and it doesn’t matter which culture we claim or what skin color we have but in order for us to be considered a child of God and forgiven, we have to accept Jesus’ sacrifice and believe that it was for us because it was! The way that the world has everyone thinking is about groups of people and we need to look at each other as individuals. Each of us is unique and different but we are all the same in God’s eyes!

The contents of that safe may have burned up, but it did its job as well as it could. It may not have been designed to take as much heat as it looks like it was exposed to, but we are. Our character is molded by our culture and that character is what we should be showing the world. If your character and your ability is modeled after Christ, then they will see Him and that is the best that we can do as individuals because we were created to be mankind and have a relationship with each other and with God.