| I live in a part of the world where people often confuse ritual for
faith. On Good Friday, for example, many Guamanians trek up one of the island’s highest mountains, Mt. Jumullong Manglo. Leading the procession, about two dozen men haul a large and heavy wooden cross. Following, as many as a thousand others--ranging from infants to the elderly--fight heat and swordgrass, stopping occasionally to recite prayers. This is, the participants say, an act of faith. “When you get to the top, you feel changed,” one person told a reporter, “because you have suffered a little, too.” A visitor took six children up the hill with her this year. “I wanted them to experience what the Lord went through,” she said. To Guam’s west, in the Philippine islands, similar scenes are played out during Holy Week. A small village north of Manila, Pampang, is known all over the world because people there inflict pain on themselves to show their devotion to Jesus. Some whip and cut themselves. Others, barefoot, drag crosses through the streets. The most penitent are hung on crosses under the hot sun. This, they apparently believe, shows faith. Rather, it shows an ignorance of the Bible and of the Lord Jesus Christ. “... we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” (Hebrews 10: 10) Jesus was the only one who could offer the perfect sacrifice for sin, and once He did so, it was finished. He does not call upon His followers to present their bodies to be flogged and “crucified,” because this does no holy good. Instead, we are to present our bodies as “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is [our] reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1) What God has always desired is obedience. “To obey is better than sacrifice,” the prophet Samuel told the errant king, Saul. Jesus told his followers, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” If we would truly keep the commandments of Christ, if we would truly love as He loved, we would truly partake in his sufferings. We would have our hearts broken over the sin that has engulfed the world. We would suffer the rejection of men when we tell them of Christ. Followers of Christ should do as He said. Then we’d have no need to pretend to do as He did. |