This is my response to a post that I came across in a WhatsApp group yesterday. I am stating where I depart from the views expressed in that post and why.
First, here is the post.
"Christians have been waiting for Jesus for 2000 years. Muslims have been waiting for a messiah from the line of Muhammad for 1300 years. Hindus have been waiting for Kali for 3700 years. Buddhists have been waiting for Maitreya for 2600 years. Jews have been waiting for the Messiah for 2500 years. Sunnah has been waiting for Prophet Issa for 1400 years. Shiite Muslims have been waiting for Imam Mahdi for 1080 years. Druzers are waiting for Hamza ibn Ali for 1000 years.
Most religions adopt the idea of a “savior” and say the world will remain filled with evil until that Savior comes and fills it with goodness and righteousness."
Maybe the problem with believers on this planet is that they expect someone else to come and solve their problems instead of doing it themselves."
It is difficult for me to speak for other religions. However, I can speak with some confidence about Christians. The wait for Jesus by Christians is not for a Christ who in his second coming will solve their problems. It is a wait for a Christ who shall redeem the world. The difference is this. In the Christian version, there is a belief in eternity and life after death (attending a funeral and listening to the service by the priest will reveal it or one can read the Bible). It is with that faith that Christians approach death. They also believe that the dead will arise when Christ returns. Given that it is fairly obvious that Christ's second coming has little to do with solving problems in our life on earth.
The second part is that the Christian also believes that he cannot solve his own problem because he is born in sin (the Original Sin doctrine) and it is God's saving grace in the form of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection and its acceptance that saves him (for Catholics, there may be some minor dispute here, however, this is pretty much what Martin Luther argued and what most of Protestant Church believes. The Eastern Orthodox traditions also subscribe to something similar.) Man's sinful nature and yet God's saving grace being available to him is not a New Testament story alone. There is only one man whom God declared as a man after his own heart; David. David's life is filled with sin of almost every variety, murder, adultery, disobedience to God's standing instructions and much more. And yet God declared him as a man after his own heart because David was constant in seeking God's will and repenting when made conscious of the error of his ways.
A Christian life is akin to Pilgrim's Progress, a continuous battle against the challenges put forward by the ever present evil. He is expected to put on the full armour of God; stand firm against evil with the belt of truth buckled around his waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with the feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, he is to take up the shield of faith, with which he can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. He is to take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. ( with due modifications to Ephesians 6:14-18) He awaits the second coming of the Christ when he along with the rest of the world shall be reconciled with God in eternity.
Lastly, the presentation of the Christian waiting for God in the manner described in the post and the subsequent suggestion comes from an idea that God is a man made construct. But the Christian God describes Himself as I AM; it is a statement of absolute existence, uncaused and unchanging. God exists and created man for his own glory.
