Paulson Post

One of the remarkable features of the Judeo-Christian religions including Islam is the ban on idols. The Jewish scriptures prohibit the making of idols and the worship of any objects representing God. Biblical Christianity has continued the same tradition. Islam standing in the same religious traditions has the same emphasis. However, this never banned art from these religions. Christian church has a great tradition of promoting sculpture and painting. Islamic art is also rich. Nevertheless, some Christian churches have gone quite far from its original ethos of an iconoclastic religion to the veneration of the cross and praying before the images of saints. Those who use idols or images in worship argue that these help in focussing their thoughts on God. The argument is that the worship is not offered to the idols but to the deity represented by the idols. Biblical Christianity, however, advocate a spirituality that does not require crutches. Their object of worship is Jesus...

"Love your neighbour as yourself" has been a great teaching that no pious Jew ever questioned. However, the range of its meaning was certainly in doubt. That is why a lawyer once stood up in one of the teaching sessions of Jesus and asked, "Who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29). The story that Jesus told him was to illustrate the meaning of neighbor. He told him the story that we now call the Story of the Good Samaritan. There was a man who was attacked by the robbers who left him on the road that leads from Jerusalem to Jericho to die. All sorts of people passed by this man but no one except a Samaritan helped him and saved his life. The priest and the Levite who passed him by without lending him any help were closer to him in every way. They were from the same race (Jews) and belonged to the same religion (Judaism) and most probably lived somewhere around that area. However, as far as Jews are concerned the Samaritan was an outcast and foreigner. He must have liv...

Down through the centuries the followers of Christ have set examples of being kind through their service to humanity all over the world. Numerous hospitals, orphanages, schools and colleges in places where there was no health care and proper education are examples of kindness that is integral to the followers of Christ. Kindness is love in action. In 1 Corinthians 13:4 Saint Paul wrote, " Love is patient and is kind...." If Christian love is a coin, then patience and kindness are the two sides of that coin. A coin cannot exist unless it has two sides! This also means that the real kindness proceeds from the real love. What type of love would produce kindness? First of all, there is contemplative love, where love is a feeling. This love, seeks and cherishes all that is lovable. Human beings has the tremendous capacity to love anything even animals of different kinds. Humans are the only creatures who keep pets! It does not move beyond the thoughts or feelings of love to...

The life of and life in modern Christian churches, with all the dissensions, hatred and disunity is certainly shameful. That is not what Christians are called to, they are called to produce the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit of the Spirit is the natural outcome of a Spirit-led life. It is characterisctic of a Spirit-filled life. The foremost of this is love (Gal 5:22). Though Paul listed love in Galatians 5:22 he best exposits it in his first correspondence to the church in Corinth. Love is the hallmark of Christ-disciples: "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Three redherrings of true love are spirituality, charity and self-sacrifice" (John 13:35). However, Christians tend to wear different masks that look like love which Paul criticizes very caustically in the great poem on love in 1 Corinthians 13. First of these masks is false spirituality. Christians who fail to love each other as Christ loved them tend to wear a mask of ...