Show Me Love

ImageLeave This

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads!
Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut?
Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground
and where the pathmaker is breaking stones.
He is with them in sun and in shower,
and his garment is covered with dust.
Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance?
Where is this deliverance to be found?
Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation;
he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense!
What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained?
Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.

Rabindranath Tagore

Dear Friends, this wonderful poem was written by our great author of India Sri Rabindranath Tagore, Let me ask you the readers a few questions, Does Our Lord, God live in a great castle ?? Is he so holy he lives in  cave like a hermit , unpolluted by the world ?? Is he so proud not to mix with people of lowly professions that the people of the world shunned. Was He the rich kid who never had to work for a living ?? Did He feel that he knew all things as a child and never discussed his thoughts ? Did he judge the adulterous and people with maligned morality ??

Dear ones you know that our Lord God Almighty came down to us not born in a castle but in a humble stable. He lived in our world his friends were not the posh Pharisees but fishermen, prostitutes, tax collectors. He spoke to the Samaritan women with five husbands a woman no Jew would have spoken to much less knowing about her maligned character. He did not judge the woman caught in adultery and did not let the people stone her because He the Lord of Lord’s had love and compassion in his heart. He touched a leper and healed him, while Pharisees would not even let a leper’s shadow touch them.

He worked for a living not as a proud Pharisee in a synagogue but as a humble carpenter. Yet he asserted his authority as Lord when it was his time to reach out to his world of Jerusalem and from His world the entire world was and is blessed. He brought back creation by  controversially spitting on mud and making  new eyes for a blind man. He also got angry and rebelled and zeal for his house consumed him as he made whips and threw out the people making his house into a market place, yes Jesus was a non-conformist and rebelled against the Pharisees.

He let a prostitute wet his feet her tears and wipe his feet with her hair and let me tell from that night on she was pure again that my friends was the beginning of grace that our Lord bestowed not only on her but the whole world.

That is not all our Lord God King Of Kings and Lord Of Lords died a humiliating death on a cross so you and I can be saved, He did not just come to our level he became a low caste or became equal to a thief  or someone the society disdains.

That is our Lord Jesus, if someone says show me love show them the cross for such love has never and can never and will never be repeated in History For what our Creator Lord  did us for no one can ever do for us.

So when you think of God, think of love that came down to our level for you and for me.

“(Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense!
What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained?
Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow). “words in italics by author and poet Rabindranath Tagore.

Anthropology from a religeous perspective

What is anthropology and what aspect of anthropology are we studying/

Anthropology is the study of mankind and in this particular context we are studying anthropology from the religious perspective.

According to Glazier and other evidence, we are in the golden age of anthropology of religion.  Karl Marx (1818-1883) was concerned for the “spiritual alienation arising from socio-economic deprivation and with the marking of economic inequality by religious activity”.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) articulated a full and intellectually inspiring reduction of religious experience to biological and social drives (taken from internet).  Luis Berkhof says that “the transition from theology to anthropology (that is from the study of God to the study of man) is a natural one.  Man is not only the crown of creation but also the object of God’s special care.

Darwin talks about the survival of the fittest, but when we speak of a fit person from the Christian view, I would say a person who is prosperous financially, spiritually, physically and mentally.

When God created man, God created a complex creature.  Physically man has a mind, a heart and a body.  Spiritually, man has a spirit and a soul.  Emotionally and mentally, man has a conscience and feelings.  When we put all this together we get a man.

Futility of mind and action.  J. Rodman William says that “the very coming together of man and woman as ‘one flesh’ is a kind of parallel to the spiritual relationship of man and his maker.  When that spiritual relationship is distorted, distortion may set in on the human level

We can clearly see, as men and women are torn between materialism, futility of their thinking and feeling, only Jesus can fulfil and fill that empty void.  As men and women deviate from each other to their other interests, their relationship is torn apart.

So what should our role be in this world?  The answer is simple evangelism and prayer.

discussion questions

  1. How would you describe a fit person in the spiritual sense?
  1. How do you think our mind and actions are co-related?
  1. How would you reach out to the world?


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Williams, J. Rodman, Renewal Theology, Michigan, Zondervan, 1990