Who or what is a non-christian? For that matter, who or what is a non-anything? However did unsuspecting people get trapped into the error of negatively defining themselves with respect to an alien identity? If I came up to you and said, there are only two types of people in the world. The YeKengales and the non – yekengales. Then went further on to say, Thank God I’m a yekengale! I’m sure you would think me an arrogant so and so (fill in your most pejorative expletive), no matter how factually correct my statement and regardless that you could have equally chosen to be inspired or challenged rather than offended by my positive self-esteem.
That’s why, even on the days we feel like that, and we admit there are some such days (still working on the others), we would never consider attracting negative attention by voicing those feelings. I prefer to spend my energy serving the people who come into my space, and so multiplying goodwill and contentment. After all, that helps feed my joy and positive self image anyway.
So it is with every category of identity:
Am I a non female? No I am male. Am I a non-American (as positive an identity as that now appears to impute)…no I am a Jamaican. And any healthy self image is expressed as a function of some positive elemental affinity and identification.
So is it not arrogance on the part of one group who manifestly seeks to define the entire world only with reference to themselves? And is it not apathy, and self contempt that any group, who succumbs to such a classification of themselves, express?
O how people can wallow in the slime of unthinkingness till their light comes. Here in Jamaica, when some people are asked to spiritually identify themselves, I’ve heard terms like ‘worldlian’ or ‘sinner’. People who don’t identify with the church positively, but yet buy into its peculiar thought systems which pour contempt on their souls.
I am yet to hear a positive definition of ‘worldlian’. One who lives in the world? Then aren’t we all. As for sinner….again since the term is basically of Hebrew conceptual origin, meaning missing the mark, don’t we all? And so aren’t we all? And of what benefit is it to characterize humanity around its imperfections? Are we not equally capable of altruism? Is that not also a human trait?
‘Pagan’ is the theological equivalent to the racial term ‘nigger’. It is a vulgar theological expletive used in the same state of mind and intention as did White supremacists heap contempt upon African civilization with the pejorative n—— word.
It means basically that the user belongs to the school of thought that holds one class of people inherently superior to another class, not based on race but theological belief (the same arrogance if you asked me). It says if you are not a Christian (/Jew/Muslim), you are a “p_____”. If you do not believe in Yahweh, then you are hell-bound and of a lower status than the elevation I claim to have.
This aspect of the european ‘asili’ or cultural personality, Marimba Ani speaks eloquently about in her book Yurugu. i recommend it to anyone stupefied by the theological or racial arrogance that has been daily fed the world through western media and other institutions.
The main monotheistic faiths that make up 3/4 of the present world’s population tend to present to their devotees this kind of poisoned theological arrogance, inherited from the Hyksos (the first recorded invaders of Kemet…i could have called them “non – Africans”) through their legendary king/priest Malkiy-Zadok (Melchisedec), the common source of the main teachings of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
God is One. This is Truth. But the departure between this originally African idea and the Melchisedecian teaching is that that One God is Inclusive of All, whereas Melshisedec’s One God is claimed to be exclusive of all. Hence, anyone outside of the covenant is unclean, unholy, less than a dog, and worthy to be slaughtered by the sword and then tormented everlastingly in a torture chamber of hell that never ends.
This is the thinking that created the slaughter of the Canaanites. The thinking that created the annihilation of the Native Indians of the Americas. This is the arrogance that motivated the rape of Africa. This is the lie that empowers White Supremacy. It is a very harmful and most malevolent error of thinking.
I ask, with all sincerity, let us stop perpetuating the ugly arrogance of the theological supremacists. The chains are off of our limbs. Now let’s get them off of our minds.
I’m not interested in who you aren’t. Tell me who you are for you most certainly are an individual reflection of Cosmic Intelligence. If like me, you have found liberty, empowerment and redemptive love in Christ, then you are free as I am to identify yourself with Christ. And whether you believe it or not, (and no offense, but I really couldn’t care less what others believe about me, I know who and whose I am.) I am a Christian.
YeKengalé 