Do's and Don'ts

Christianity is often portrayed in our society, sometimes justly, and a religion of Don'ts; Don't do this and don't do that. However, if you look at the Gospels, Jesus is much more interested in Do than Don't.

He spends much more time telling His followers to do things than not to do them, his commandments are usually positive: Love one another as I have loved you, Love your neighbour as yourself*, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, set prisoners free etc.

It is also interesting to look at some of the things he tells people not to do. Most importantly Don't be afraid, Don't judge and Don't be a hypocrite.

That doesn't mean that He isn't willing to point out to people where they have gone wrong, but He always stresses the positive future not the negative past. For example, the woman facing a stone throwing mob is told: neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more - in other words the past is passed now look to the future and do better.

This is such an important lesson; not to get mired down in our past failings, but determine here and now to do better in the future.

* As an aside it is interesting that most people concentrate on the love your neighbour side of that equation and forget about the as yourself bit. We all need to love ourselves, if we don't we will never be able to love others, our self-loathing will always get in the way.
Scripture teaches us that God loves us and created us in His image and in His eyes we have worth. Even in our broken and sullied state, even at our worst, even at our lowest ebb, God thinks we are worth loving, not as an abstract whole, as humanity, but as individuals, known fully, and loved fully

Quote of the week

"...we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals"

This is the moment Barack Obama really hit the spot for me in his speech this afternoon. It gives me hope that America will start to live up to the ideals that its founding fathers promised. President Obama's speech was inspirational and will have encouraged many people around the World. Now we have to see if the political establishment and big business will allow him to live up to the promise.

I realise that this is my first post for over five months, to be honest I haven't really felt like publishing my thoughts for the last few months, largely due to a lack of anything positive to say.
But, after a shaky start, the new year has given me a brighter outlook and hopefully I will manage to add to this blog a bit more often.