We need a Jesus-based cultural revolution, Dr M’membe
By Staff Reporter
WE need a Jesus-based cultural revolution that will recover the fear of God, the respect of honour, the dignity of family, and the beauty of morality, Socialist Party 2021 presidential candidate Dr Fred M’membe has said.
In an Easter message, Dr M’membe said Jesus himself was the most radical revolutionary leader who ever lived.
He called for the joining of the socialist revolutionary cause to fulfil Jesus’ call of changed world.
“Jesus came into our world to launch God’s revolution – a kingdom revolution, a revolution of the Spirit, a world-changing movement that would overcome evil with good and hatred with love. And Jesus himself was the most radical revolutionary leader who ever lived,” Dr M’membe said.
“Join our socialist revolutionary cause and fulfill Jesus’ call to change the world, a life-changing book filled with challenging examples from saints and martyrs of the past”.
He said too often, however, people look at Jesus as the founder of a “lovely home and garden religion,” called Christianity, a harmless spiritual leader who left behind some lovely platitudes and inspirational thoughts, a man whose memory they celebrate at the annual Easter egg hunt.
He said that was hardly the Jesus of the New Testament as his message was a threat to the religious establishment.
“He called for dramatic, sweeping – yes, revolutionary – change. He taught his followers to pray radical prayers like, “Your kingdom come, yours will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” – meaning, the displacement of the corrupt kingdoms of this world by the perfect kingdom of God,” Dr M’membe said.
He said Jesus called his disciples to revolutionary commitment, urging them to leave everything and follow him, and in his platform message, he promised freedom to the captives as stipulated in Luke 4:18–21.
“That is the language of a revolution, and that is the language we must recover today, as our nation teeter–totters on the verge of moral and social – not to mention economic – collapse,” Dr M’membe said. “We need a Jesus-based cultural revolution that will recover the fear of God, the respect of honour, the dignity of family, and the beauty of morality”.
And quoting a socialist of the 1920s, Dr M’membe said, “we socialists would have nothing to do if you Christians had continued the revolution begun by Jesus”. “Yet more than 90 years later, they remain foreign to many Christian ears. What “revolution” did Jesus begin? And was Jesus in any sense a “revolutionary”?
He said as Dr. Martin Luther King warned decades ago, “if the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”
Dr M’membe urged for the examination of the present methods of leadership against the biblical grid.
He emphasised a reason for great hope as expressed by the Vernon Grounds, “A Christian who… becomes a revolutionary will serve as a revolutionary catalyst in the Church; and by the multiplication of revolutionised Christians, the Church will become a revolutionary catalyst in society; and if society is sufficiently revolutionised, a revolution of violence will no more be needed than a windmill in a world of atomic energy.”
Dr M’membe wished the country a happy Easter.
