Should Christians Curse their Neighbors?

Blessings Beyond Words in A Divided World

Santo Domingo - 2022

"God bless you!" Growing up, I heard it on the streets, in school, or whenever my parents put me to bed. My culture used the word "blessing" as another casual phrase in everyday life. Not too long ago, I watched a video of drug dealers before robbing and selling drugs to someone, praying, "God bless us!" Here in America, when someone sneezes, people say, "Bless you." We say it so often that it starts to lose its true meaning.

I have a funny story to illustrate this. When my daughter Alegra was born, we went to the Republica Dominicana for the first time. We stayed in a historical area of Santo Domingo. As we returned to the hotel after lunch, a bus full of teenage girls stopped, and they all came off. About 30 of them came down at the same time Alegra was running through with her cute clothes. All of them said in one voice, "Aw!! Que Dios la bendiga!" Alegra loved the attention, and we were shocked by how many “blessings” she received that day! 

What is a blessing? Is it a cultural expression? A form of politeness? During the pandemic, a gospel singer named Kari Jobe released a viral song called ... "Blessings." Our world needed that. Wait.. needed what? Another song? Or blessing? But what is a blessing? 

Blessing is a form of wishing good things to others, a way we treat people, even when they don't see it. Blessing is praying with and without words, something good, positive, and uplifting. Blessing is the opposite of cursing, slandering, and judging. Therefore, the opposite of blessing someone is to curse, but it does not mean to call them bad names or even hurt them physically, but to look down on them within our soul. 

Jesus told the disciples that we don't need to kill someone physically to be a murderer. It is enough to ignore somebody, expect the bad of somebody, or even raise our eyebrows when somebody cuts us in traffic.

Reader, I am writing this because my heart is in pain because of how much I curse people. Yesterday was the epicenter of it. I battled with it from the beginning of my day to the end. Why is that? Why was I walking around, ready to judge others? 

Jesus Christ also addressed the judging mentality when he said we must check our lives before judging people. "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" He is saying that we are all equals. We have our strengths and weaknesses; we are sinful humans, systemically and personally unable to function to full capacity. By saying that,  Jesus affirmed that "we are on the same boat" and nobody is superior. Only God is perfect to judge. 

Why is Jesus concerned about that? He wants us to bless people to fulfill his greatest commandment: love God and our neighbors. Thus, superiority and pride are curses for our society! 

Yesterday, I walked around feeling better than everybody else. I wasn't loving. I did not bless anybody around me. This is not what God intended for humanity.

To fix that, God took the form of a human and became flesh and blood. Jesus entered reality to bring a new direction, to turn the world upside down. Jesus was superior to anybody else, yet he made himself "nothing"; he emptied himself of glory, power, and honor to be a humble servant and die for our sins. He did it to paint a new paradigm for humanity. We are all equal no matter how much money, influence, and social status we have. Jesus made himself the incarnated blessing. As Athanasius of Alexandria once said, "He became what we are, so we might become what He is."

Isn't that insane? No other God has ever done that! 

Join me in becoming a blessing to the people around you. Bless those you know and those you don't. I end with the oldest blessing of all time. The priestly

blessing of Aaron in Numbers 6: 

"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.”