Monday, February 25, 2013

Corpus Christi: The body of Christ

I might not be a theologian but I read my bible enough to know that St paul referred to christians as " The body of Christ". By this, he meant if I am not mistaken that Christ who isn't on earth needs a b...ody and that is where we as christians (the church) come into play. When a sick person needs cure, a physician does that. When bones need to be put together, an osteopath comes in. When our money have to be managed, an accountant is called upon e.t.c. In the church, we need each other because no man is a repository of knowledge. The professor might seem to know a lot but when his shoes requires fixing, he sought for a cobbler. A teacher disseminates knowledge but would still require the expertise of a Doctor when he falls ill. So even with our abundance of knowledge, we still need each other. The importance of unity cannot be overemphasized and this is shown in this story told by a priest sometime ago. "A farmer's head, legs, stomach and hands decided to have a meeting. They each highlighted their importance and blamed the stomach for being lazy. The hands spoke about tiling the soil and carrying some of the produce to the market. The legs spoke about doing majority of the work ie moving the farmer to and fro the farm and even to the market. The head boasted of housing the eyes, the nose which are important and also that it carries some of produce to the market too. All blamed the stomach for being lazy, only to be fed at the end of the day. They decided not to feed the stomach again. After a couple of days, the head complained of dizziness followed by the hands who complained of weakness then the legs complained of not being able to carry the farmer again. The stomach sat making noises which led to them having a rethink. They fed the stomach and each began to feel well again, that was when they discovered that even as insignificant as the stomach seem, it plays a role." This goes a long way to show that as a church, we need to be unified. There seem to be a segregation and some form of discrimination amongst denominations within Christ's body. A songwriter once said "They smile at me yet they beef undercover". The same could be applied to Christiandom today. People of a certain denomination appears to be happy with their counterparts from other denominations only to go back to their 'church structures' and start criticising them for their dogma and beliefs. We as christians seem to lack respect for each other, even going to the extent of speaking ill of a different denomination. Gone are the days when preachers pass negative messages about their counterparts in other churches indirectly as they even call names nowadays. The Catholic pope spoke about resigning the other day and a good number of non-catholics made some derogatory statements which would be unwise to state here. We all are in this heavenly race together whether Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Jehova's witness, Pentecostal etc and so we should be unified instead of speaking ill against each other because God doesn't really care about the church you attend but your relationship with him. So, instead on concentrating our strengths on tearing the body of christ apart, we should channel them into fostering our relationship with each other to create a model for generations to come.

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1 comment:

  1. True! People bring divisions that should never have existed! We mustn't all believe in same thing same way!

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