John 13:34-35
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
John 15:12
These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
John 15:17
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.
Romans 12:9-10
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
Romans 13:8
Katie met a little girl while on vacation with her mom. While playing on the beach, that little girl proceeded to tell Katie all about Hell and all about what "God hates". It breaks my heart that that little girl has received such bad information. It breaks even more to know how much she is hurting the cause of Christ.
If you meet someone who is anxious to share their religious beliefs with you and the first thing they tell you is "what God hates", there's a pretty good chance that person has some issues. If I want to introduce someone to Christ, I am gonna need to spend about a million years trying to adequately describe to you all that God loves. I'm not sure how long it would take me to get to what He hates. (Spoiler alert: According to the Bible, God hates divorce and idolatry. That's it) God takes hate seriously. He doesn't throw the word around for everything that doesn't make Him happy.
I am unapologetically, completely, inextricably in love with Jesus. But I am no big fan of probably 20 % of His supposed followers. A word of explanation here. You may think you 95% of the Christians you know are annoying hypocrites. The problem with your math is that most good, decent followers of Christ don't get a ton of press coverage. No one is going to blog or tweet about a church that feeds the homeless or clothes the poor. But let that same church have a pastor that seduces the youth minister and see how fast they hit the front page. You see my point here. God has a faithful remnant doing great things in this world in a humble Christ like way. You just aren't exposed to them as much as you should be. That being said. What to do about the rest? I will be danged if I know. Christ has commanded that I love everyone and, not once, did he say to love only the ones I like. We talked about this before. Jesus was no fan of the Pharisees...but He still loved them.
But how do I walk that out in my life? Do I lay hands on the punk kid at the beach and pray for her stupid parents? Do I just pray for her? What about the other gazillion people I encounter? How do I love them?
And yes, I get that this is part of satan's plan. I mean can you imagine how this world filled with hate, horror, pain and need would respond to the God I serve? The God that loves unconditionally? A God that knows us and loves anyway? A God whose love never fails? Can you imagine what the world would be like if your kid found a friend at the beach who said "God loves you. He loves your mom too. He only wants you to love Him back."
We live in a hard world. And we are literally surrounded by people who are dying without Christ.
They are dying.
And we (the church) are offering them physical therapy in the form of doctrine and behavior modification. And there is a time for all that. Trust me.
Recovering people need therapy.
Dying people need Jesus.
Dear God help us stop screwing this up.
Amen.
1 comment:
I have some relatives that go to a church that seems to work into every sermon how awful, wicked, terrible people truly are in their hearts and how they don't deserve Jesus going to the cross for them. I listen to these sermons on their podcasts and it blows me away. Do we deserve this sacrifice? Probably not. But, if God thought we were awful, wicked, terrible people, would he have sent his Son to the cross? I don't think so. To me, it's an act of love and not of hate.
Like the person on the beach, so many people try to use fear to "scare" people into the church. These people completely miss the point and that is a shame.
I read Rob Bell's book (Love Wins) last year and he wrote about an encounter (I'm relying on memory and won't get all this totally right) with an atheist that told him he could never worship a God that uses fear and intimidation to get people to worship them. Rob's response was something like, "I don't worship that god either."
I think that perfectly sums it up.
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