is very healthy to make clear what our Christian religion actually means to us. It is a deliberate effort to evaluate if what we believe in the Creed actually has an impact on our daily lives.
Now, I must flip the question upside down: What would I lose if I did not believe in Jesus Christ? What if I barely had a touch of the Christian religion?
I am sure I would miss the core, the central energy of my life. I would not know who I was on the surface of this earth. This little exercise is pushing me to think clearly.
Jesus is God actually coming among us in all the weakness of human flesh. I believe in the great act of human redemption: the death and resurrection of Jesus. But I know that the divine mystery does not stop with Jesus: now, I must be transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ.
I feel a strong sense that the war-making between human beings is totally contrary to the very heart of God. We were never placed on this earth to run out and destroy each other as is happening right now in the troubled spots on the globe. God has put a restless and uncomfortable spirit within us to move away from aggression and work toward peace and justice between the tribes of humanity. The spirit of Jesus is an attitude and determination to work toward peace and justice within the human family. There are some days when I perceive this peace-building to be very weak, but God does not give up on human beings.
Humanity has had three centuries of the industrial revelation. Human beings had conquered the land, the sea and outer space but now we are threatened by our own success. The earth is warming up. All forms of life are threatened. But there is a strong movement among Christians and so many others to work of preserve the earth. There is something so much deeper in this concern to save the earth. This is also the spirit of God, who has created all parts of the earth in love, moving us human beings to change our way of living and work to preserve the earth, the water and the atmosphere. The spirit of God is moving in ways that we have not paid attention before: we are being tasked with survival of the human race and every living creature on this earth.
When people get pushed aside, that is pushed to the margins, I sense the spirit of Jesus moving us to reach out to the poor and the neglected. The spirit of Jesus is not different but is moving us to see the very face of Jesus in the forgotten, the struggling and the poor with their many faces.
If I did not have Jesus, the struglesnof my life would collapse. This exercise forces me to become more aware of what Jesus is and does in my life.
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