South Africa and AIDS have shared an intense and strange relationship over the years.

Aside from hosting the most severe AIDS epidemic in the world with 5.7 million infected with HIV, South Africa has witnessed the disease cause controversy for the current president Jacob Zuma, who publicly proclaimed he was HIV-free earlier this year.

So it should come as no surprise that a minister in South Africa developed a novel way to spread the message of Christianity.

South African Pastor Xola Skosana told churchgoers at his Sunday service that Jesus often put himself in the place of the most marginalized people in society.

So when preaching in South Africa in 2010, that means Jesus was an HIV sufferer.

Some people are quite unhappy with Skosana's message. By saying that Jesus Christ was HIV-positive, critics say the message implies some very un-Christlike things about the Lord and Savior such as that Jesus was either gay, an intravenous drug user or sexually promiscuous.

First of all, I guess these people never heard of folks like Ryan White or Arthur Ashe.

White became the national poster child for AIDS/HIV in the United States after contracting the infection from contaminated blood given during a routine transfusion.

Ashe, a tennis champion and civil rights fighter, also contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion obtained during heart surgery.

The point is that people don't always get HIV/AIDS from the so-called "unholy" acts of being gay, using drugs or sleeping around.

Second and most importantly, Skosana is using the "Jesus had AIDS" message not to rewrite history but to make a point about one of Christianity's most important lessons -- what you do to the least of my brothers, that you do to me.

If Skosana's controversial message can get even one person to treat a person with HIV or AIDS just a little better, it will be worthwhile.