Lost Sheep
Nonardo Perea
HAVANA TIMES — A friend and I went to a Christian party. We weren’t exactly invited. The pastor wanted the gathering filmed, and another friend of ours asked us to help in the recording as a favor.
I had no objections, because I respect all of the world’s religions, so I decided to lend my friend a hand at the party.
I won’t deny I felt a little uncomfortable. From the moment we set foot in the courtyard of the house, the people there began to look at us as though we weren’t normal. They looked at us, rather, as though we were a species about to become extinct.
Used to these kinds of attitudes in society, I sat down at one of the benches out on the courtyard and began to observe everything around me. Shortly afterwards, the pastor showed up and began greeting those present. After a long time, she approached us with two, young Christian men (she already knew who was filming the gathering).
She made us stand in a circle. At the time, I didn’t know that was part of the gathering.
In a low tone of voice, she began to pray and asked the Lord to save the lost sheep of the flock. I assumed the ones who were “lost” were my friend and I, who, without charging anyone a single cent, were there doing them a favor.
I almost burst out laughing. My friend and I would look at one another and smile. We couldn’t do much else but laugh to ourselves.
I wonder: who told the pastor my friend and I were sheep, and lost, for that matter? Where did she know us from to assume we were people who needed the Lord’s help?
We finished filming the gathering. The pastor addressed a number of beautiful closing words to her sheep.
Unexpectedly, her cell phone began to ring. It was the pastor’s husband. She put the phone on speaker and, from the United States of America, the pastor greeted everyone. When I heard the man’s voice, I suddenly felt as though in a Michael Jackson concert, because the sheep who weren’t lost wouldn’t stop screaming with excitement.
To conclude, the pastor made a girl go around the courtyard with a small sack in one hand, to collect money from those present, row by row.
This made me think the pastor was also part of the flock, and that she was a rather shameless sheep.
The “church” as an institution and as a religious tool has no power. If you put your faith in the institution, i agree with you 100%, it is foolish. My friend, I speak of putting faith in Jesus Christ alone, the author and perfector of our faith (hebrews 12:2).
I encourage you to look past the stupidity and bad stereotypes of christianity. People abuse religion but it does not mean there is no God and there is no Jesus. Satan, the devil, wants to deceive all of us into thinking there is no hope, there is no God. If we depend on only ourselves (human reason, science), do you have confidence we can take care of ourselves? I mean look at the human race and how we are ruining the Earth. Can we truly have faith in ourselves?
I’m praying right now that someday Jesus will be made real to you – and you will know the truth that Jesus saves us from our sins so that we can have a relationship with God. Blessings, my friend.
It is more than obvious that you have not watched that 13 minutes of Hitchens destroying your immoral belief. From long personal experience I know you are unable to either watch it all or look into the questions it raises with the facts it presents. .
Trying to read his book; “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything ” would also be impossible for you.
Ignorance is essential to maintaining faith .
Someone once said that faith is making a virtue of not thinking and in order to believe the nonsense you believe , you must ignore science and fact; NOT think about these things .
Your problem is you think you know everything because if you don’t have a scientific answer for the big questions , you fall back on “God did it” .
You stop looking at or for scientific answers and, as demonstrated MUST avoid looking at or for those answers from science and fact to preserve your faith in the impossible.
Those of us whose faith is in science and fact KNOW both how much we know about how this universe came about and how very much we still have to learn about almost everything.
Yeah, sure Adam and Eve had pet dinosaurs, just like Fred Flintstone.
( look up the Creation Museum in Kentucky) .
Zeus help us!
Religion is more than the old sagas in the Bible, Koran or Torah…… religion is more than those economical organizations we call today Churches……..since the very time some “illuminated” were telling their visions and some writers were writing those visions down ion books they called the “true” there were also other people using logic and science to explain the same issues the religion tried to explain….. those wise people were called and still are called philosophers ……. so, religion is a mater of philosophy nowadays…….. you can put aside all other old things.
Dear friend, I pray for you and others who have not found Jesus yet. Jesus’ death on the cross reconciled us to God so that our sins would be forgiven and that we could once again have a relationship with God, our Creator.
I do not care for “religion”. Religion is made by man and is organized much like any other human organization. Look at the Catholic church as a prime example!
Knowing and following Jesus IS what it means to be a “Christian”. It is not about being just part of a social church gathering where a guy speaking at the pulpit is your “leader”. Your leader is always Jesus and Jesus alone. He alone saves us from our sins and He alone leads you in life and to true life.
Jesus said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to God the father except through me.” (John 14:6)
For those of you who are skeptics, that’s ok! There is nothing any other human can say to convince you – and they don’t have to. Only God can draw you and make you see the truth. When Jesus opens your eyes and draws you to Him, don’t resist! Follow Him!
Hitchens’ 12:58 blather is the same warmed-over negation of deity often used by atheists to deny the gospel. His arguments would only begin to make sense if God were just a man and therefore subject to the rules which govern man. Without accepting the reality that a “celestial being” is indeed the creator of “celestial”, non-believers will always fall short of the faith necessary. You are clearly an avowed atheist. Christians don’t need a “cure” and you need prayer.
It is said that God works in mysterious ways. He chose to use you, a non-believer, to be source of the name of His church. I kinda’ like his sense of humor.
“For believers no reason is necessary………. For non believers no reason is enough”
I recommend to non believers to study a bit of quantum physics and to learn that the materialism was left without mater by this science….. to learn that all we know as mater is composed by pure energy in its core …….. same energy opposed to mater by different philosophical streams ones in religion favor, others against religion…….to learn that even that tiny nucleus that gave us the big bang was pure energy, a tiny nucleus of energy that incredibly produced in few seconds the whole universe we know, the rest of the universe we do not know and maybe some (or several) universes more that exists parallel to the one we live in….. after learning these things and other bizarre behaviors of the energy I invite you all to come here and try to deny the following statement of Albert Einstein:
“The Religion without Science is blind….. The Science without Religion is lame”
Your story reminds me of an incident during my misbegotten South Florida youth (circa late 1950’s/early 1960’s) ! I was dating a Christian girl and wanted to progress beyond “second base.” This required me to attend a “Christian fellowship” with her, which I did. During one of these meetings, the group decided to take it to the next step and found a church, and requested nominations for the name of the church. Since I have always been somewhat original, I came up with a unique name–which was adopted! To this day, (some 50+ years later) the church, under that name, still exists. Now, as I was then, I remain a religious skeptic. Alas! Although I advanced to “third base,” I never hit a “home run!” Just as well, as a first class fantasy is worth more than a third-class reality.
A cure for the belief in the tenets of Christianity:
Go to You-Tube
Ask for “Christianity is false and immoral Hitchens”