…continued from Part 1
“Love thy neighbour”:
Loving thy neighbour is the second most important thing required after loving God.
But make no mistake, Jesus tells us in the Bible to do both of those things in our lives. If we focus only on God and not love those around us, then we only love ourselves. We completely eliminate others when we focus too much on the bible, this happens because we tend to follow the scriptures to the letter and we start to compare that with the people’s deeds around us and then we slowly isolate ourselves from everyone. This can turn quite dangerous cause it hurts human relationships and can even lead to religious extremism.
I assure you thats not what the Lord wants. He wants a relationship with us and love others as well.
Let me refer you though back to “loving thy neighbour”.
What’s the best way to love others?
Giving value to others, recognize the people around us as human beings, be polite, smile at them, be kind to them, not judging them, show them mercy, pray for them, bless them, love them, listen to their concerns, and give advise when we clearly can understand their problem. The best way to approach that is to put our selves in someone’s shoes in order to understand their concerns, their pain, their sorrow, or whatever is in their heart or mind.
Off course we have to be weary of others that are not a positive influence in our lives, therefore we need to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” as the Bible says, meaning be perceptive and see through people but don’t turn any evil against them cause thats the Lord’s job, He says: “vengeance is mine, I will repay”. We can only pray to the Lord to give us discernment but we must not react against anything evil done to us, I assure you that when we ask the Lord to resolve the problem He will act! The best thing we can do as people to help these lost souls who are in the wrong, is to pray for them to come into repentance but also pray to God to fight our battles against the evil spirits that are making others do evil on us.
So we keep our distance (with a smile and kindness) from people that don’t do us any good but we still need to try to understand where they come from and keep them in our prayers so that the Lord can guide them and help them. Now whether these people are friends, flatmates, relatives or family, it depends on what the situation is and you need to seek advise from experts or people you really trust on what to do.
God though listens to our prayers, He fights our battles and solves our problems! And trust me He will do a much better job that you and I could ever do…The only thing He longs for us is to talk to Him, and He never says no when we ask Him to come into our lives, to forgive us, help us, or make others to come to repentance! His will is to recreate the Universe and make it better! Holier! And closer to Him.
I would also like to share with you a little secret, that the author/pastor John C. Maxwell said in one of his lectures:
“Giving value to others is the number one characteristic of leadership!”
From the moment you start to develop your christian values and your self knowledge, you are becoming a leader in your circle or people.
Alexander the Great knew who he was and his destiny, he knew all the names of his soldiers, he gave them the spoils of each battle and left nothing for him, he lead his army by standing in front of them riding a big and tall horse named Bucephalus in order to be seen by his troops standing at the back. He lead his soldiers from Greece all the way to India by being a great example! And his legacy lives on till this very day! Wherever he set foot the locals still remember him as a kind and true leader.
Another historical example is the Byzantium (Eastern Roman Empire).
If you check the movie registry Imbd, there are 72 medieval movies registered. They all show about the dark ages in Medieval Europe. Not a single movie in this number mentions the Eastern Roman Empire. No, I am not talking about any conspiracy theories or agendas. The answer is pretty clear: There were no dark ages in the ERE. Byzantium was the most educated and spiritual kingdom in Europe. The emperor Theodosius the 2nd gave the order to all the linguists and literature writers to gather all the ancient greek writings (philosophy, Homeric epics, social and natural sciences, history, etc) that were preserved in the monasteries throughout the empire. He founded the first university in Europe called the “The Imperial University of Constantinople”. This university lasted from 425 AD till the fall of Constantinople in the year of 1453 AD. All people in governmental positions were required to finish their education there so that they know how to run the empire. So there was a combination of greek education and deep religion coexisting in the empire. There were some conflicts here and there but everyone accepted that the sciences lead to the book of God.
Education was valued by every byzantine, every citizen of the empire idealized of going to school, kids would start learning reading and writing ancient greek at the age of 6 by studying if they could afford it the Homeric Epics. People who remained uneducated regardless of their social standing were frowned upon.
Greek education and Christianity are the founding basis of the western world and we gradually have removed them from our society over the last few decades. The older generations (our grandparents) used to learn about the ancient Greeks in high school, they would go to church and participate in the word of God, they built a solid education which made them strong and responsible citizens. In the medieval times the christian monks all over Europe studied the Ancient Greeks relentlessly and maintained the wisdom that helped us reach new heights today. The reason of our decline its simply because of these values are now slowly deleted from being our prime guides in life and society.
Now we also need to mention that the western world has made historical mistakes (oppressing the Native Americans, black slavery, world wars, ethnic cleansing, imperial colonialism, human exploitation, etc). And again all these mistakes will only be rectified by personal and national self knowledge (passion for curiosity, history books without any form of agendas, philosophy in a more simplified english, mathematics as a philosophy of life, learning ancient greek) in order to learn from our mistakes as individuals and as countries and we must not let ourselves ever forget our mistakes or else we will keep repeating them.
So in order to change our western society, we need to make a decision in our lives and change our selves through self searching (greek education) and giving value to others humbly (christianity). Self ignorance and Ego has really made our life decadent and meaningless.
But don’t expect any authority to change things for you, if they wanted to they would have changed many things a long time ago. We need to be that change, we need to be leaders within of ourselves and by putting God as the authority in our lives. Once we change our selves, our inner world will start changing our outer reality, negative things, situations and people who are holding us back will start changing or even be removed. Don’t fret or worry by your detachment, embrace it, mourn over it, and let it go, but stay focused on the Lord cause He is seeing you and He is starting to elevate you and train you for better things.
Keeping you in Prayer!
John Kakalas
© John Kakalas
