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

Death speaks volumes and we tend to listen more carefully to our dear ones at the death than when they were alive. In the recent past, four deaths spoke to me powerfully. One is of my friend who died suddenly before reaching the fiftieth birthday. A man of full of plans, things lined up to do for God was suddenly called to glory. The other was the death of a two little children of my Sunday school aged eleven and nine years in a road accident. Their dad, a cousin and the cousin's granddad also died in the same accident. It was very painful to watch two kids and their dad aged just 38 lowered to the same grave in three coffins to be laid side by side. They had dreams, plans and aspirations for life, but God had different plans and none of us could question his plans nor should stop him doing what he willed for them. I had to take a serious look at my life. I have plans, most of them are certainly things that I want to do for God. However, every planning requires some assurance of t

But before we take our journey to that side of the grave we need to make sure where we are going. Please make sure where you will end up before that transfer from this life to the other happens. A few days back, a teenager in Pune killed himself by hanging. He was from a well-to-do family happy family, got a lot of love and care from his elder sisters and brothers. However, he decided to die just to satisfy his curiosity. A lesson in his Marathi textbook about the martyrdom of India's freedom fighters made him curious about death. He used to ask his parents and teachers what happens after death. The answer his parents of this Hindu boy gave seems not to have satisfied him nor of his teacher. Finally, he decided to find out by himself. The police told the press that he committed suicide in order to find out for himself what happens after death. When he killed himself, he was not sure where he was going and what is going to happen to him. People were always fascinated by what happe

" But you know that Timothy has proved himself, because as a son with his father he has served with me in the work of the gospel" (Philippians 2:22) Great leaders are not always born but nurtured by people whom God had blessed with grace, wisdom and experience. However, an attitude of submission, obedience and willingness to learn is what is expected of those who would like to be used by God. The house where my parents live was built long before I was born. However, I have memories of this house being renovated to add two new rooms: one on the first floor which later became my room. The carpentry team consisted of a father and his two sons; both sons were married and had small children. The father had the drawings and consulted my father occasionally and the sons just took instructions from their father and slogged. The father would take break from hammering the chisel on the wood occasionally, have a smoke and walk around the structure that is coming up. The sons worked si

Many of the modern Christian leaders were not physically attractive nor did they come from families of high social or economic standing. They were very ordinary people, from very ordinary circumstances but God used them beyond their limitations. I can think of William Carey who was missionary, bible translator, linguist, and educator. He was an English cobbler! Pandita Ramabhai was a young widow, from a poor Brahmin family and just four-feet tall. William Seymour was a black, son of former slaves, a railway porter and blind in one eye. God used him mightily at the Azusa Street Revival. How can God use us? The answer to this question can be found in 2 Timothy 2:20-21 where Paul uses the metaphor of pots and pans in a big house. “In a large house there are articles not only of godl and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. If a man cleanse himself form the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master

What are the privileges of those who serve God? Psalm 16, most scholars agree is about a person who has become a priest of Yahweh. The psalm describes his resolve not to serve any other gods and declares his exclusive loyalty to the God of Israel (Psalm 16:1-2). One of the privileges of the priests in Israel was to eat part of what was offered to God. It could be portions of the sacrificial meat, or could be the Show Bread presented before Yahweh everyday (Lev. 22:7). The psalmist refers to this in verse 5: “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot” (KJV). Sometimes husbands and wives or lovers express their love by sipping the drink from the other partner’s cup. That’s one way of saying “I love you”. In some religious communities, during their feasts, they eat from the same plate to show their solidarity. In verse 5, Psalmist considers God as his partner, from whose cup he has the right to drink. That is the privilege of serving God. God is no

Humility is to live our lives in such a way that our self-image does not stand in our way of serving others and God. Our motto should be “strong and quality inside, humble outside”. Christians need to be people with a soft-crust: approachable, loving and lovable. In Ephesians 4:2, the Bible exhorts those who believe in Christ to live a life worthy their calling. Those who believe in Christ are not just mere believers, but they are children of God and thus belong to the household of God. The call is thus to live lives in a manner fitting the values and ethos of the family of God. One of the shared values in the family of God where every believer in Christ is a member is “humility”. In Ephesians 4:2, Apostle Paul wrote: “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” The word translated as “being humble” means, “having a humble opinion of one's self”. It is not having self-pity or having a low self-estimate. Rather it is having a proper self-estimate

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more that all that we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us...." (Eph 3:26) The new “health and wealth” gospel that is being preached to us actually making us put a cap on what God can do for us. We should leave it to God, to his will. The ultimate purpose of Christian life is to glorify God and not to limit God. The new gospel of prosperity that is being preached is one of “name it, claim it”. The argument is that human words have power to make things to happen. It follows from this reasoning that God will grant anything that we ask specifically. Promoters of this “gospel” say that we need to clear in our imagination and be specific about our prayer requests. For example, if you are praying for a car, don’t just pray for a car, they say. Pray for the specific model, specific color, etc. However, I find this teaching and all its reasoning contrary to the Word of God! The Bible teaches that we don’t kno