A point I have been trying to get across for several years now to serious church goers; is their relation to church, over people.
A key verse I can’t get away from when considering this, is when Jesus tells the parable of The Good Samaritan.
Notice, the kindness of the Samaritan gets pointed out by Jesus. Not the men heading to service to worship .
And the important fact that he would have been someone to avoid due to his ethnicity is rightfully emphasized( a very important and still needed lesson ).
Yet, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone mention the fact that they were choosing their place of worship, over a human in need.
They were headed to the Temple. Their Holy Place. Another time and place to worship, as they’d done so many times before. It was ritual, tradition, salvation, their meeting place with God. Their life. Their dedication.
And they considered it more valuable, than a human life. You find this multiple times throughout Scripture though, including the healing of the man on the Sabbath. Why haven’t we started practicing it?
They passed on by. Their hearts were in a different place, well meaning and sincere; but their loyalty and hope were in the temple. Where they believed they should be, faithfully.
And it’s like, Jesus is saying, “Hey stop! Don’t you see!? This is Me! The Samaritan is the one following Him, in the real since. Acting out of Jesus’ true essence, light, healing, selflessness and love. He is implying, “ this, THIS; is being the servant I’ve so persistently tried to define…with my life!!”
Go and do likewise.
But people tend find comfort in ritual, and the reading of words and verse; over discerning need.
I can get so confused concerning the reality of this: of our modern day believers of God, of Jesus, of Love and His way…being more excited and loyal over church services, than helping people in need.
Though to admit, I can to. I have; so I suppose I’m not surprised nor confused.
I was reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called Living Buddha, Living Christ; and it has to do with the similarities between Jesus and The Buddha.
Something(reading books about other beliefs) I used to be afraid to read thanks to fundamentalist fears, placed within my head for so many years…
And I came across something The Buddha had taught:
“Many who looked directly into the eyes of the Buddha or Jesus were not capable of seeing them. One man who wanted to see the Buddha was in such a hurry that he neglected a woman in dire need whom he met along the way. When he arrived at the Buddha’s monastery, he was incapable of seeing him. Whether you can see the Buddha or not depends on you, on the state of your being.”
Same story, same characters, same ignorance and blindness in men.
How do we get so caught up in the things that don’t really matter? The exacts, the earthly(of the world and flesh, if I may) man-made ways of defining and describing..of needing facts and figures…we hunger and thirst..not for God and Love, as much as we do comprehension at least.. or so it seems.
Again, I have learned this all from a place of once being so; and probably still having a degree of this all within my own heart and mind.
How do men and women so determined to find God, salvation and hope for their own souls; walk on past people in DIRE need daily and weekly?
As they head to the temple, the church.
The meeting place of God.
Striving and fighting to attend just enough.
To have enough Scripture memorized and read.
Full of faithfulness in our heads we are…
To the words, “the right script”, spoken by the right set of lips.
The Undoing of Me 