Out of the sunny southern hemisphere comes an illustration of the radical message of Jesus. Baptist churches in inner-city Sydney have put up signs saying “Jesus Loves Osama” and quoting Matthew 5:44:
The reaction from other clergy and even the Australian Prime Minister has been overwhelmingly negative, as other groups have tried to distance themselves from a church that would go so far as to say Christ the living son of God could actually find it within himself to love Osama Bin Laden, Terrorist #1:
“I’m hesitant about it frankly, it’s a bit misleading,” Dr Jensen [head of the Anglican church in Australia] has said on Southern Cross radio.
“If I were a relative of one of the victims of Osama’s activities, I might take affront at this.”
Dr Jensen has said Jesus Christ did preach universal love, but there is a difference between love and approval.
“There is a truth in it (the message of the billboard),” he said.
“(But) what we’ve got to say is, Jesus doesn’t approve of Osama. It makes it sounds like, ‘Oh, Osama’s doing the right thing’,” he said.
Prime Minister John Howard has said churches displaying such a message might have their priorities askew.
“I understand the Christian motivation of the Baptist church,” Mr Howard has said.
“But I hope they will understand that a lot of Australians, including many Australian Christians, will think that the prayer priority of the church on this occasion could have been elsewhere.” link
What a fabulous illustration of how confronting the message of Jesus is. Nobody denies Jesus said it, but everyone wants to qualify the sentiment and distance themselves from the presentation of the sign. link
Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. Difficult and radical? Yes. Absolutely necessary for following Jesus - also yes.
Awesome.
It reminds me of the “political” pin that one of my friends has that says “God bless Iraq” (in the font and colors usually used for “God bless America”).
Ooh, I didn’t even notice the “But Osama Hates Jesus” scrawled below until just now. That emphasizes the point even more - Jesus’ love is radically and unabashedly asymmetrical. Jesus loves Osama even of Osama hates Jesus.
of course…but/and Jeuss does not…yes, “hates” what he is choosing to be and do…..?
[...] via Radical Congruency. [...]
[...] Hat tip [...]
Ummm…
UBL, and all his terrorist-cohorts, don’t hate Jesus; He’s a prophet in Islam. They just hate Christians.
It’s best to confront the enemy on facts, not wishes. Ignorance sows the seeds of defeat, and quick harvest at that.
rob@egoz.org
You and I, we are all sinner, Jesus loves Osama. There is nothing wrong with that, and he love us all, although we all are sinners. Jesus preach “Ye have heard this is hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you …”
yes, and could this radical love be part of the stumbling block laid in zion that so many do stumble over?
I’m glad Jesus loves me!
If you have time, pop over and visit my blog. Encouragement in Your Walk of Faith I talk about politics but I do have a few good topics.
Blessings!
Linda
And the point is?
Whether some long-dead / imaginary / mythical magic man loves some whacko religious murderer is about as interesting and useful as a bicycle to a fish.
Enough of this sheeple! When will you realize that the ones loving you and taking care of you can only be other people around you, not god.
[...] clipped from http://www.radicalcongruency.com [...]
well , i’d hate to say it but, osama is just sticking up for the muslim world and that alone shows me compassion and he actually seems like a nice guy, heck he U.S. housed 22 relatives of hie and rushed them out of the country on 9-11, so he can’t be that bad if we are willing to do all that! He has my blessing!
Jesus may not approve of Osama, but he doesn’t approve of Dr. Jensen either. Love and approval aren’t the same and you’d think the head of a “christian” church would know that.
As far as “Nobody denies Jesus said it”, a whole lot of people deny Jesus said it. Only a fraction of the world’s population believe Jesus existed at all (not to mention that Jesus never mentioned Osama at all).
I don’t disagree with the billboard. We SHOULD love Bin Laden, but we should hate everything he stands for and does. Few Christians realize there is an appropriate time for hate.
Travis - you’ll note that all of your references are OT. There was a whole lot of time to hate, kill, etc. in the OT.
The NT seems to take a different direction on this.
!Sheeple and MA - your points are well made, if slightly inaccurate in point of fact. Nonetheless I’ll concede them.
However, you’re missing the point…
I’m probably going to get into trouble on this, because I’m not as well versed as I’d like to be. Having said that, we see historically Martin Luther King Jr. having non-violent protests, working to build a bigger tent that included both blacks and whites, etc, and he is revered as a national hero of a civil rights movement. No, he wasn’t perfect, but he was pretty darned good at a time when our nation needed him.
We then have Malcolm X, who very naturally and rightly saw whites of the time (or at least some subset thereof) as the enemy of blacks, and was much more aggressive and confrontational in his approach if I understand correctly. He is now barely acknowledged for any role he played, in spite of a late enlightenment on the subject.
The point is, love your enemy works. praying for those who persecute you is a step towards seeing them as people rather than bogey-men and loving them. Whether you believe in Jesus or not, this is good stuff.
And the deeper point of this post to me is that Christians should have a very different attitude towards this than people who believe that Jesus never existed or was no more important than anyone else. Christians should be living by the word of Christ (pray for OBL today?) or do some serious re-examining.
All religions are bad for your Health (mental) . Life without religion = life witout pressure .
Now , go and Live freely your life.
And put a terrorist in jail , don’t love him , he needs to be punished ,not loved.
Man, you athiests are quite a shock to the system, I mean as in, that’s all that you are, holding no withstanding points as far as discussion, and post your opinions purely for a subtle shock value.
As far as humans and religion goes, it’s very, painfully simple: If you hate someone, they will hate you, if you love someone, they will love you; if you give it time, give up foolish pride, and show people that are full of hate, something that is true and positive, they will eventually love. Yes, the “truth” is distorted, and not quite the same for all people, even if you say “the sky is blue” someone could say otherwise and be right, so if you say “when I read the bible I see hope, I see that Jesus was a GOOD man, and did what he could to be good to the people around him” than that is your view, that is how YOU see it, the sky is blue. Although, in another life, in a different world (30 miles can make the biggest difference, even five feet can) someone looks at the bible and sees Jesus as just another man, living, nothing special, or even not there at all, that is that persons view, their sky, is not blue, they saw it in a different way.
Now, is the sky still there? I think it can be generally agreed, yes, it is there. Can you still believe in SOMETHING? Even if it differs from someone else’s belief, can you believe that god is a teacup in the center of the earth? sure. Why? because no one can tell you otherwise, and frankly you can’t tell anyone else that you are right either, because you aren’t there, but it’s your belief, it is what brings you hope and happiness. I suppose what I’m getting at is that no one is right, no one is wrong, because no one can really prove any of it either way, but no matter what you do, they’re going to believe in something, and more than likely, it’ll be different from your belief, so just get over it, get over the silly little detail, just be glad that other people can be as happy as you with what they have in their mind and their heart.
Tell me, can that stop progress the way that we seem to be doing right now, with all these foolish fights over who’s right? Will it really hurt you that much to accept that other people need SOMETHING to believe in? Everyone does, even atheists, or else they’d be bums on the street with nothing to look forward to (i.e.-they believe in themselves, which is good)
(tl;dr - stop whining, get over yourself, continue with life, it doesn’t take much.
Now THAT is the tough thing to accept. We can say “pray for George Dubbya” but if you dare pray for Osama Bin Laden you’re told you’re praying for the wrong side. Fact of the matter is everyone needs prayer.
The question is “How do we pray for these people?”
Slainte!
Abbie.
We should love Osama Bin Laden, but that does not preclude us from putting him in jail. Similarly, we punish our children, not in spite of our love, but because of it.
Now, I’m not deluded — I don’t believe that USA is a Christian nation that abides by the teachings of Jesus Christ — but imagine if a nation could capture a terrorist, give him a generous, scrupulously fair trial, and sentence him to prison without torture. That would embody the love, truthtelling, and justice taught in the New Testament, and it would be a testament to how strong we are. Vengeance killing would show how morally thin and weak we are.
However, I’m also not deluded that such a demonstration of “love” to OBL would convince our enemies to love us. That wasn’t Jesus’s point, and he demonstrated it with his own life, like a lamb to the slaughter.