Verity Christian Fellowship

….Jesus went up the mountainside with his disciples and sat down to teach them.

Matthew 5:1

There is a vast gap in the public perception between Jesus and what he taught, and Christians and the teaching of the church. People believe they should be the same thing and so they should. But over the years, usually for political reasons, the teachings of Jesus have been manipulated and adapted to make things more comfortable for us until sometimes there now seems little resemblance between some church doctrines and what Jesus actually told us to do.

An example of this is what is known as the prosperity teaching. Some say that if you follow God you will flourish and will have all your dreams fulfilled in this world. Jesus said you cannot serve God and money. Don’t look to earthly riches but store up your treasure in heaven by letting go of what you desire here on earth.

In America in particular the church has also been recruited into supporting the Republican party even though a lot of what it stands for does not align with Jesus’s teachings.

A result of this is a new movement in the church in America called ‘The Red Letter Christians’. The name is taken from the fact that in some bibles the words of Jesus are written in red letters. The movement is supported by Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis and details can be found in the ‘useful links’ section of this page.

The premise is that we try to get back to the real teaching of Jesus. The simple test of this is to ask WWJD in any situation. The answer may make us feel uncomfortable sometimes. I found a good demonstration of this by reading The Sermon on The Mount in The Message version of the New Testament. This give some portrayal as to how radical Jesus’ teaching are and how far off the mark we have become.

So perhaps we should go back to basics and re-evaluate what Jesus actually said instead of believing what we would wish he were saying. If we did this then perhaps we could have a real red letter day.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 2:56 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.