What Happens when My Christian Pastor Seeks the Help of Non-Christian Priests to Teach Me About Jesus Christ

Yes, Jesus Christ exhorted me to help alleviate the suffering of others. Yes, to love and consider my neighbor as my own.

But he didn't tell me to foolishly poke my nose into the fight between that neighbor and the next and then own it up.

There was this pastor I revered much for long time. Then after many years I decided to part with him. Why?

Because one Sunday, he brought in a non-Christian priest to teach us about Christ.

No, I am not intolerant. In fact, I am a secularist. But I could not agree to his selection of a non-Christian for teaching me about Christ.

Because I had read the holy book of his new friend too.

That book surprisingly exhorted its adherents to attack, pillage and rape non-adherents, that such activities are not sins, that such activities will make them go to heaven, and that God will suitably reward in heaven anybody who will indulge in such "pious" activities.

Oh, yes, in fact I have read not one but two holy books which exhort their respective believers to do that.

But, how come my pastor had the ignorance to invite the follower of such books inside the church to teach me about Jesus Christ?

After some weeks, the pastor discovered my continuing absence at the prayer services. So he came in search of me.

I was ready for him. I gave a piece of my mind. He never believed when I told him about the offending passages in his "friend's holy book". In fact he argued that no holy book of any religion would carry such sinful things. I told him I would show him those books.

So after a few days I went to the vicarage with the two books I loaned from the public library and showed him the passages. His next excuse was that the non-Christian priest's ancestors belonged to the geographical area where Jesus walked.

I told him I did work with other religionists in my work place and I had no problem with them. As long as everybody or his or her forefather had been legally admitted to this country I had to accept them as my own compatriots.

But to ask a priest into the church whose holy book exhorted its believers to commit crimes against me was not the right way to teach me about Christ.

So I told him bluntly that whatever Jesus Christ had to tell me was there in the Bible in plain English and if that was not enough, there were explanatory notes in plain English too to make me understand the difficult verses. I didn't need his help if he sought help from non-Christian priests to teach me about Jesus Christ.

That I understood the necessity for Christians to commune, so I came along. But I wouldn't be coming again.

If Christianity in this country is being misled into taking part in fights which never was part of USA, then such ignorant pastors are responsible for it.

It is clearly written in the Bible what I have to follow. But if I don't read my holy book and listen to others who have nothing to do the book about what is in the book, that need not be what is in the book.

That is exactly why:

American Christians have been blindly led into wars, controversies and absolute rubbish of not our making, in places we should not be by those who actually created them abroad and who then crookedly hoisted the responsibility for their crimes on our heads.

Yes, we went to avenge Pearl Harbor. But that did not and does not mean we have to be eternally step-fathering the headaches others created and still create in foreign lands.

Yes, whatever we have to know and to do is written there in Jesus Christ's own words in the Bible. Just read it ourselves without the mediation of a priest or politician or media person.

Then we won't be surreptitiously led into situations of not our making or into places we should not be. Going to church does not mean being blindly led like lambs to be slaughtered.

Yes, Jesus Christ asked us to help and alleviate the sufferings of others. But that didn't mean we eternally be responsible for people who don't know how to live in peace or purposely don't want to live in peace.

We needn't hate anybody. But we needn't be held responsible for the fracas they create.

Yes, we can try to bring peace but that doesn't entail taking over the fight.

In fact, Paul advised us to try three times to bring peace and if they are not listening, dust our shoes, walk away and have nothing to do with them again. Paul gave this instruction when early Christians were purposely tricked into controversies and got killed by others.

We didn't listen to that advice that is why we are now being dragged into fights we didn't start, trying to find answers which we needn't provide.

God didn't create us to waste our precious lives in the company of people who are scheming and plotting all through their lives and can't sleep unless they create at least one trouble to their fellow beings on this beautiful planet every day.