Stumbling block for Jesus

This is my beloved Son; listen to him”. (Mt 17:5). Are you willing to obey and follow Jesus Christ and follow him? Do you long for the peace and joy from Jesus when you follow him? To follow Jesus genuinely, we need to breakthrough the weaknesses and nature of Sin of humankind, and liberate ourselves so as to allow God to reform us. This is a long-lasting journey filled with blessings.

The original creations of God were beautiful and harmonious. Genesis has mentioned many times “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 2:15-17).  God put human in the garden of Eden and told them to enjoy God’s creations. He commanded them not to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden, they would die if they ate it. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil represented the self-centredness of humankind, they wanted to be their own masters, they wanted to judge and decide everything.  Such mindset would extend to judging people and things with their own standards, values and expectations, seeing me as always right and what they thought were good would be good: “I think that its good”. 

When we judge people, it is not only unrespectful but it also puts pressure on others. It also makes us easily running into disappointment and angry easily and affects the harmony in relationship unnoticeably. We have to be mindful of self-centredness which is a stumbling block for following Jesus. We should be willing to follow Jesus’ view of “And God saw that it was good” to liberate ourselves, see limits to our wisdom and offer ourselves to God totally.  

It takes strong and solid faith for us to shift the personal will from “I think its good” to God’s will of “And God saw that it was good”.  We have to be humble enough to trust God’s will is the best.  Although there are challenges but they are not unbearable because Jesus will not neglect our needs.

Another stumbling block which hampered following Jesus is “jealousy”. From the descriptions of Cain and Abelin the Bible, we saw another root of sin which was comparison with others—the mundane world teaches us to pursue superiority when we were kids: we have to have outstanding school results; great achievements; good children; praises from others; being competitive, etc….It seems that the only way to feel secure and satisfied is when we are superior than others. Jealousy not only affects our interpersonal relationship but also our values and that leads us to lose ourselves in the lust of the mundane world. Everyone is created by God and owns the image of God. Everyone is loved by God and Jesus taught us to see him in others. Let us think: if we can transcend our horizon, we will be able to transform jealousy to appreciation of and blessings for others; in this way, we attain peace and joy.

As the two stumbling blocks in following Jesus, self-centredness and jealousy are difficult for humankind to overcome. It is only when we are willing to reflect ourselves and offer ourselves to God totally that we can overcome these limits. Jesus came to the world with the objective to reform the world which has been distorted and lead us to return to “the good of God” to feel blessed. Let us listen to Jesus and strive to remove the stumbling blocks with the help of him and reach the End.

Lenten Campaign Organising Committee, 2023