Buddhism

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This week we discussed Buddhism, which was founded by Siddhartha Guatama.  He was a prince from NorthernIndia (563-483 BC).  Buddhism was basically a result of his frustration trying to reconcile suffering in the world with the existence of a good and perfect God.  This is a problem that many still wrestle with today.  You have probably heard someone question the existence of God due to the severe amount of heartache and suffering in the world.

Remember, our goal of this series is to better understand what others believe so that we can engage in intelligentconversations with those who believe differently than us.  We want to demonstrate the love of God through our lives, not by trying to convert, but by trying to understand.  This is becoming more and more important.  Please take minute to the read the brief article below.

Snapshots of Religious Life
http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/currenttrendscolumns/leadershipweekly/snapshotsreligiouslife.html?start=1

In order for us to have the opportunity to share our relationship with Jesus with others, we have to be more concerned about the person than about their beliefs.  It is not our job to “save” anyone or to “change” them.  Our job is to simply love them.

We Are Unique

This was the first week in our new series entitled “We Are Unique | What They Believe”.  We will spend the next 13 weeks investigating the beliefs of other religions.  As we do this, my prayer for all of us is that God will increase our compassion and discernment and decrease any arrogance or fear.  We seek truth.  And as I stated on Sunday, my hope is also that we will get to know those who believe differently than we do.  That we can listen to them and learn from them and hopefully love them.

We referenced John 3:1-8 & 16-17.  This is Jesus’ famous night encounter with Nicodemus.  Our friend Nicodemus asked Jesus about the requirements for Kingdom entrance.  Probably expecting to get a to-do list, Nicodemus was very confused and caught off guard by Jesus’ response of being “born again”.  Jesus reassured him that to have a relationship with Jesus required a heart change first, not another to-do list.

This is the difference between Christianity and other religions.  Christianity is about a relationship with a Living Savior, not a list of to-do items to see how good we are at completing a set of tasks.  The question I asked on Sunday was do you think Jesus himself was being “intolerant” in His interaction with Nicodemus?  Do you think it is intolerant to say that Jesus in the only way?

Take the time to read and reflect on this article:  http://delveintojesus.com/articles/17/Is-It-Intolerant-to-Say-Jesus-is-the-Only-Way.aspx

The thing that Jesus did in his conversation with Nicodemus – that we often times forget to do -was He delivered his message with a reminder of God’s Love for the world.  Jesus was less concerned about convincing Nicodemus that He was right and more concerned that Nicodemus understand how much God loves the world (which Nicodemus was a part).  Jesus was not there to condemn, but to provide the truth to the answer that Nicodemus was seeking.  Shouldn’t our approach be the same?  We should never condemn someone else for their beliefs and we shouldn’t apologize for what we believe, but rather our focus should be on God’s love for all people.

Jesus

We completed our series on “The Least of These” by looking at Jesus.  It is very easy to think about Jesus when we are in Life Group or at church, but sometimes it is not as easy to remember Him through out our every day lives.  We looked at Peter’s denial of Christ from Matthew’s gospel (26:31-75) and we began to understand why we tend to forget Jesus in our daily lives.  Here is what we learned from Peter:

1.  Selfish motives arise in times of crisis.
2.  Peter failed to grasp Jesus’ teachings, true purpose and warnings.  Don’t we often do the same?
3.  Pride goes before the fall.  Peter’s actions did not match his words, his life was out of balance.
4.  Peter wasn’t yet ready to give his all…his life

I guess the final thing that we can learn from Peter is that he did learn from these mistakes as became the leader of the New Testament church.  But he also felt remorse as soon as he understood what he had done.  How often do we feel remorse once we have realized we have denied our savior?  How often do we go outside and weep bitterly at this realization?  I am afraid that we deny Christ in more ways than we realize.  Sometimes it’s our silence, other times it’s our actions, maybe our words.

Mother Teresa was quoted as saying “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise”.  What a great quote.  My prayer for you and for me this week is that as we encounter others we remember that each one of them is Jesus in disguise.  How will you treat them?