We Condemn Ourselves

Gospel: Matthew 11: 20-24

What are the consequences of not seeing Christ in every person, in not welcoming all people as another Christ?  We might well long for eternal hell fire and destruction as we apply such to others but not to ourselves.  But we need not look that far into the future in order to see the consequence of not welcoming all and in failing to see Christ present in others.  

We have only to look at the world around us: the world of unspeakable violence and crimes, the world of theft, exploitation, and lies, the world of self-interest and greed.  We attempt to avoid seeing all these things by creating gated communities, home owners associations, stockade privacy fences, and endless entertainment designed to distract us from these realities.  We create daily routines and routes designed to avoid these neighborhoods and nations we have created but refuse to accept the consequences.  

When we fail - nay, refuse - to see Christ present in others, when we fail to welcome him in the person of others, we create the world in which we live.  The atheist may blame God, the theist may blame the devil or some abstraction like secularism. But we have only ourselves to blame. We created this world, and only we can make it better.