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PEACE Wayne Dale Matthysse
As we age, people’s beliefs often undergo many changes and refinements, becoming more expansive and inclusive, or more closed and dogmatic. I have met my former self a couple of times in the past few months and it has made me realize just how the passage of time has polarized my way of thinking. It got me to wondering if who I have become is really a result of growth and understanding, or have I, in the weariness of age, grown tired of battling for my GOD and perhaps even crossed over the line, as some have made claim, and become a persecutor of Christians.
I can see how a few who have read my writings and know me only superficially could label me a Heretic... but now to say that I am actually persecuting Christians who are trying to bring GOD’S message of Salvation to others is disturbing to me.
I know exactly how these people feel because in the beginning of my journey I too felt persecuted for Christ’s sake. Just JESUS and me against the whole World and if people didn’t like me, it was because they didn’t like HIM. I could be antagonistic and even rude towards people and Peoples who didn’t share the same views that I held because the GOD of the Universe was on my side and WE owned the World. I suppose I got much of this from growing up in a Christian Reformed environment; we were after all, the people GOD chose after the Jews killed Jesus and not only was I baptized as a child but carried the mark of circumcision as well, which practically guaranteed me a seat in the Inner Sanctum when the Pearly Gates were opened, or so was my thinking when I was young, energetic, and willing to do anything for Jesus..., well anything that is except follow the Second Commandment that Jesus gave us. “Love your neighbor as yourself."
I didn’t have a problem with the First and Greatest commandment that said we should Love God with all our heart but when I left Grand Rapids, Michigan, in June of 1966 to enter Navy boot camp at The Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago, Illinois, my neighbors became people of different races, religions, and colors. Many, I would soon learn as we were marched to the showers, were not even circumcised! Talk about religious persecution! I was sure feeling it those first few nights away from home. Language was another problem. The closest I had ever come to swearing was to try and think of the word that Johnny Carson was being “beeped” for on the Tonight Show. I didn’t realize that there were so many beepable words in the English language. Surely God did not mean that I should Love all of these as my neighbors! I had never known a “heathen person” before, at least not on a personal level, but there was no doubt in my mind when I first entered boot camp that I had just been cast into a whole company of the fallen.
I didn’t realize it at the time but just a little less then two years later, while serving as a medic with the Seventh Marines somewhere in the countryside around Da Nang, it would be men like these who would give away their position so that a medivac chopper could lift me out of a combat zone and into safety, knowing full well that by doing so they would seal their own fate and earn the right to have their names written down on some memorial Wall in years to come and perhaps even on The Page White and Clear.
I have met a lot of people since that time who are nothing like me at all. Many live and hold beliefs that seem so strange and even Heathen at first, but as I live and work among them I can sense that GOD is just as much interested in them as HE is in me, molding and shaping them to be what He wants them to be. HE wishes for no one to feel unworthy of HIS Love and Compassion, and as I see it, helping people to experience GOD’S love can be our only ministry.
It is true that I have chastised “Christians” for disobeying my request that they not proselytize when coming to our Project for AIDS patients. It is also true that I have told people I did not want them to come back if the only thing they want to do is preach about Christianity but don’t want to physically share GOD’S love with our patients, by hugging a child or by comforting a sick patient with a touch. It is also true that I have told people not to teach classes from the BIBLE while on the Buddhist Grounds or play Christian music at full volume when the Buddhist Monks are present. These things can easily be seen as persecution by some but that is not the way I see it. My reason for criticizing or rebuking, as some may see it, is not because I have anything against the GOD they say they serve, but because the individual, in my mind, is not following the Two Commandments GOD has given. We are to Love the person we see before us and do nothing more. There is no Third Commandment given to us by JESUS. Whatever changing that needs to take place will be done by the Holy Spirit in HIS Time.
MT 22:37 Jesus replied: " `Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
Perhaps if those people, Peoples, or even Nations, who feel that they are being persecuted because of their religious beliefs, were to reconsider the TWO GREAT COMMANDMENTS and than start applying them to the way they live their daily lives, we would start to see a change in the way the World is presently heading. I did... and I believe I made the right choice.
Wayne Dale Matthysse |