History

In my middle east class we listen to at least one “mosaic” a week. A mosaic is a website that takes news solely from Middle Eastern countries and makes it available to the world.

http://www.linktv.org/mosaic is the website to listen to the news.

Once we listen to the news we are then asked to go onto a major US news site such as cnn.com or foxnews.com and search through their website to try to find the same articles with an American twist on it. Usually you scroll down and click on "World", then "Middle East", they are then listed in order that they are posted.

While studying both the Mosaic and the US news I’ve concluded that everyone around the world is the exact same as us. There are nice people and there are not so nice people. Today I got on and it was speaking a lot about corruption in the Middle East. It caught me because we’re learning about the integrity which is enforced in the Islamic religion and also in the Arab culture. I thought to myself, “that’s not very Arab like” Then my epiphany about them being just like us hit me in the face.

Erica and I started talking about this and everyone is born with the light of Christ. There is the concept of the natural man which we have to overcome, but we are also born with the light of Christ, the innate capacity to love and care for others, even those whom we don’t know.

While watching Mosaic, Erica and I saw footage of innocent people being executed. The men carrying out the executions had no mercy, and seemed as if they had no emotions. One man was executed because a military officer wanted his hat. History has many examples of dictators oppressing their people and taking away their God given rights. Are these men going to be excused of their crimes because they haven’t received the Gospel? I personally don’t think they will.

I feel that the gospel doesn’t make someone a good person. I’ve known many people who do not belong to my faith, some even who are atheist, and are amazing people. On the other hand there have been prominent members of many different religions who live two lives, one of a publicly religious person, and another they pray the public never finds out about.

If Hitler had heard the Gospel would he had spared the Jews? Would he had shut down his concentration camps and let everyone go home. I don’t think he would of.

I think that Hitler and other Tyrants of history have surpassed the concept of the natural man. I feel there are many people alive today who have accomplished the same, Osama Bin Laden being one of them. The natural man isn’t being born with the desire to murder, torture and oppress.

When we are born we have two guiding lights in our lives: the natural man being one and the light of Christ being the other. They pull is in opposite directions and the more we give heed to one, the less influence the other has on us.

To the extent that the persons earlier mentioned lost the light of Christ and succumbed to the natural man, we can equally lose the natural man and in the same magnitude that they had become bad, we can become good.

All of our lives are going to be written in a history book of some sort, whether it be journals, textbooks, etc, What will history say about how you lived your life? :-)