Your Body: The Temple of the Living God

A story is written in the Gospel of John (Jn 2:13-22) about how Jesus cleansed the Temple of Jerusalem; making a whip out of cords to drive out all those who were selling animals and money changers.

To understand this whole story, however, it is good to understand the background of the temple. This temple was the centre of Jewish religion and as such all Jews from around and from all over the world used to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices. These were the Jews that remained in exile when the others were returning. The sacrifices were in the form of oxen, lambs and doves which were offered as burnt offerings to the LORD. There was also a temple treasury which could be likened to the modern day offertory in a Christian churches.

Of note is the fact that some of the Jews came from lands very far away and as such they could not carry with them the sacrificial animals due to their bulky nature. This led to the introduction of a provision of a place in the temple where sacrificial animals could be sold. That solved one problem for the travellers but the other problem was that of currency. The Jewish temple did not allow foreign currency in its treasury. This meant that people from outside had to change their money to the Jewish equivalent for offering.

This was good as it offered people from far a chance to worship God the normal way.

The problem came in when people stopped looking at it as a way if helping their brothers and sisters from outside and started taking it as a business. They adjusted the rates if exchange for the money to maximise profits and they were selling the animals at a higher price just to do the same.

That is why Jesus came in to rebuke them, telling them that His Father's house was not to be made a market place.

Later the same Jesus in His chat with the Samaritan woman (John 4:20-24) talked of how irrelevant the worship place is, and how good it is to have a personal relationship with God by worshipping Him in truth and Spirit.

Paul consolidated that by pointing out that our bodies are the temples of the Holy spirit (1 Cor 6:19).

Relating to both the cleansing of thr temple and the fact that our bodies are the temples of the living God, you and I today are called to examine how we are using the temple of the Spirit that God has given us.

Are we using the bodies we have for personal gains? Jesus drove out those who were using the temple area for their own personal gains other than for the help of others and the Glory of God. Our God wants to be worshiped in truth and Spirit. Does our inner temple allow us to do that?

What would Jesus do to us if He came into our temple?

Examine your temple and use it for the Glory of God for He is a jealous God.

1 Cor 6:13.

Inspired by a homily by Archbishop Thomas Luke Msusa.

A Little Talk on Language Skills

Those who are friends with me on Facebook know how much hatred I have for poor grammar and spellings. Some may call me a subjective idiot for it, but if you think of it, that is the very reason the word grammar was even invented; to put up order and make sure that languages do not get even more distorted making up a modern phenomenon of the the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-8)

Well. Here is the thing. A lot of people say that an intellectual nowadays does not have the same command of the Queen's language a JC dropout had in the Ngwazi days. I am in 92% agreement with that and I think this is a reason for worrying.

There are a couple of reasons why this concerns me. I will put them in the order of importance to me which might not be the same for you. If you are a rational being, however, you will agree with some of the things I say here.

I was talking about the issue of spellings and grammar. Nowadays the biggest platform that exposes this problem is the social networking area. With the influx of smartphones and the not-so-smart phones, Facebook accounts have become a basic things and everyone is on it. There are also many other interaction platforms but for now let us talk about ZuckVille.

Facebook was meant for posting. Posting text that is (those who want to post photos do it on Instagram nowadays. And shame on you if you have ever accused anyone of posting too much on FB). I personally have no issues with seeing a hundred updates from a single person in a day but I have an issue with a post that has too many grammatical and spelling errors. I always say this that I am not a saint on this one, but when this becomes too much it looks as if it was deliberate which gives a lot of mixed feelings; mostly the bad ones though.

The reasons for the hard feelings. The first one is just that I am am easily irritated by these language errors. Simply put. It might be to my desire for perfection in everything (some people have told me I am some sort of utopian guy who lives in fantasies. Works for me though). No big explanations on this one. Its just me, but let us be a bit more objective.

The other reason I hate broken English in our social fronts is the origin of it. These things are nowadays coming from from people who are ideally supposed to know better. Intellectuals. These are supposed to be people who should be writing the appealing stuff in English. Not what's on the ground.

Religious figures. Its not a good thing for someone to post the message of God in broken English, but that happens too. Very distracting, if you think of it and this was evidenced by my friend, Reagan Gonani who clearly said he cannot trust a Pastor who preaches in broken English. Maybe we need to switch to the languages we are the most comfortable with.

All of these give me a headache but the ones that are the most worrying to me are teachers. Now these are the people to whom we trust our children (Well. Not that I have some) for education. Having them willingly expose their incompetence in the very thing that they are supposed to be teaching makes me wonder whether we need to be developing our own curriculums and be homeschooling our children in language skills.

One of the reasons for which we have this serious problem is that most of  us are so much into casual texting and have with time rendered that synonymous.

Maybe it is time we moved from thinking of texting that is not shorthand as too formal. Maybe that could help cure the proper grammar and spelling deficiency syndrome that we have.

I know many do not agree with me that this is a problem. We have to agree to disagree sometimes, right?

Signing off. If exotic is difficult try vernacular but at least get comfortable with one.