How should act those who call themselves Christians

Something that surprises everyone in Brazil is the lack of commitment to the cause of the Gospel by a significant number of people in our country who call themselves Christian, a contingent that makes up about 90% of the population. Census figures that indicate this percentage can be verified in a report published in this magazine issue 246. Here is the link: http://www.oconsolador.com.br/ano5/246/especial2.html

It is surely this lack of commitment that explains the level of violence, corruption and moral decay that the Brazilian press shows us daily.

In a country with a high percentage of people supposedly Christian, the social and economic framework should be necessarily different. But it is not what you see, because the facts show that Brazilian society is, in its various sectors, distanced from what can be considered a legitimate Christian life. "My disciples are known to be very loving," it is a Jesus’ phrase that nobody ignores. Will we see it fully realized one day?

A legitimate Christian life, as it is easy to deduce meditating on the lessons of the Gospel requires a climate of social life in which fraternity reigns and where everyone helps and rely upon, seeking to resolve, severally, their difficulties and problems.

Living the Gospel message is to live with others, accepting them as they are, with their faults and imperfections, without pretending to fix it. The true Christian inspires his or her similar with kindness, that he or she awakens and changes of behavior by choice, never by imposition of others.

Isolating yourself from the world, under the guise of spiritual growth, it is only an experiment ever attempted in the past, in which selfishness predominates, because it get the person away from the fight that forges heroes and builds the saints of selflessness and charity.

As we learned in spiritual doctrine, such a procedure is a mistake, because it cannot please God a life in which the individual deliberately decides not to be helpful to anyone. Of course, we are not referring here to those who turn away from our midst to seek retreat in tranquility claimed by certain occupations or those who retire to a certain closed institutions to engage lovingly to rescue the wretched. These, though away from socializing, provide unquestionably excellent services to society and get double credit because they have in their favor, besides renunciation of worldly satisfactions, the practice of labor laws and Christian charity.

According to Joanna de Angelis, coming down from Happy Valley Regions to afflictions valley to help us, Jesus showed us how they should act who call themselves Christians. He did not call to him the privileged, but the unfortunate, the rebels, the rejected, supporting their ills and loving them.

Recalling Master example, the spiritual mentor of Divaldo P. Franco recommends us (Moral Laws of Life, chapter 31):

"Attest your trust in the Lord and excellence of your faith by living with the unfortunate brothers more than yourself.

Be the lamp on to clarify them to march.

Expect nothing from others.

Be you who help, apologize, and understand.

If they cheat or betray you, if they blame or require from you what they do not give, love them more, suffer them more, because they are more needed of relief and love than you suppose.

If you can live peacefully with difficult friends and make them companions, you will have succeeded, because Jesus in your heart will always be reflected in conversation, in social intercourse with them that seek thee and with who goes toward God."