Rafael L. Oriel, Jr.
16 April 2008
Mr. Ceralde,
In your previous post, you said, “I could not picture the prophets and St. John the Baptist staying away from the politics of their times. They sure earned the backlash from the administrators or the rulers of their times.”
You also asked, “Wonder what type of leadership our church should follow when they see open and blatant scandals being covered-up now days by the ruler of the land?”
To respond accurately to your post, we need to go back to the time of St John the Baptist and to the time when the Holy Christian Church came into existence.
The Holy Bible is the best book where we can find the details because it contains our history as human beings and our relationship to our God and to each other.
We know that there are three main entities that significantly affects the lives of the people during the time of St. John the Baptist.
These entities are government institution ruled at that time by Herod who is known for the Massacre of the Innocents, a foreign invader called Roman Empire represented by a Governor Pontius Pilate and the third is the religious institution.
According to history, these three entities are dysfunctional in some ways. Of course, the biggest influence of people’s life at that time is our Lord Jesus Christ.
As we can see, the same is obviously true today. The same three main entities during the time of St. John the Baptist affect our country and its people today. These distinct entities are government institution, foreign countries and religious institutions.
We should learn from their mistakes in the past and our Lord Jesus Christ should still be the biggest influence in our life.
Unless they changed leadership without informing us, what I know all along is that our Lord Jesus Christ was always the leader of Christians ever since the beginning of the Holy Church that He built, is it not? He is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Therefore, it is logical that the type of leadership that true Church should follow must be the leadership of Jesus who was born for the poor, for the lost sheep and all for the glory of God.
I believe He paid taxes and had given us a hint of the separation of the church and state when He said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” It is very unfortunate that there are so many dysfunctional churches today.
Dysfunctional church is a term used to describe a church that is not functioning as a healthy part of the body of Christ. It has been said that many people have been wounded and scarred by dysfunctional churches resulting in disunity, ineffective ministry and lots of confused people.
No wonder people are starting to look for healthy churches where most of those who attend are in unity with Christ, in harmony with each other as a community of people with strong faith in God and pursuing God’s purposes in culturally appropriate ways.
