Tag: Love

This is not our home

A strange thing has been happening in recent years as I find myself constantly angry every time I read or listen to the news. I am angry about the level of lies, and misleading facts that our leaders are spreading every day. But above all I am angry about what we, the Christians of today, have become. We have sadly become the pharisees of the modern world (see https://www.barna.com/research/christians-more-like-jesus-or-pharisees/.

We are more concerned with establishing and imposing rules in a world that does not belong to us than in protecting the weak and the vulnerable and drawing the lost to the redemptive grace of our loving God.

We are more concerned with protecting our rights to freedom and comfort than we are in taking care of people who cannot defend themselves. More worryingly we insist on imposing rules that we have created for ourselves on those who do not believe in our God.

How are we ever going to be able to bring the lost back to God ?

How are we ever going to be able to bring the lost back to God with our hypocritical behaviour? We claim superiority in morals whilst at the same time spewing lies, judging others, condemning non-believers and imposing rules that even we cannot live up to.

Do you really think that we are showing the true character of God when we put our right to celebrate Christmas for example ahead of the rights of other faiths to celebrate their own holidays? And what about defending the right of the unborn whist at the same time condemning the living to a life incarcerated and separated from their own children simply for asking for a chance to a better life?

This is our hypocrisy; we are now seen around the world as the most judgmental section of society. We, the Christians of today, representants of God on this Earth, are turning people away from God because of our behaviour. We have turned our back to the teachings of Jesus and in doing so we are letting him down.

Every time we treat a child of God as inferior to us, every time we draw a line to keep a stranger out, every time we close our eyes to the silent pain of another human being, every time we let fear overpower love we are showing the world the devil in us when we should be showing Christ in us.

We have a duty to serve

Wake up, brothers and sisters, this is not our home, it should not feel comfortable, we have no right to freedom and comfort in this world, they will come to us in the afterlife. What we do have is a responsibility to serve our fellow human beings regardless of race, gender, religious beliefs, nationality or sexuality to bring as many of them as possible along with us to the kingdom of God. THIS is our duty and obligation and we MUST urgently make this our priority again.

Also see http://www.cross-of-life.org/when-god-cries/.

I love you with the love of the Lord

As Christians we are told to love our neighbours as ourselves (Mark 12:31). We are told that God is love (1 John 4:16) and that as his followers we should love and show love to all around us. We are told to be compassionate like the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), non-judgmental as Jesus told those who condemned the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) and to show sacrificial love to our brothers and sisters like Jesus did on the cross (Mark 10:45).

However, too often this is far from reality.

I am not a Christian by birth right and by this, I mean that my parents did not attend Church when I was a child. I also did not become a Christian through an act of great salvation following the realisation that I had ‘made a mess of my life’. I have always believed in God but turned to the Church because of a desperate need for unconditional love and acceptance. Unfortunately, I found neither in the church.

My overwhelming experience, in my days attending different denominations, was of a group of people more prepared to accept a murderer than a person who did not conform to a set of rules, all different depending on the denomination, and loosely based on the bible under the caveat of ‘I say this in love’ that seem to excuse all manners of sins. I was judged in the Evangelical Church because it took me a long time to publicly ‘give my life to Christ’, even though, in my mind, I had done so long before as a child. I was judged in the Catholic Church for having been baptised in an Evangelical Church. I was judged above all for choosing to marry a non-Christian.

I am not alone in this experience and have met countless souls put off by the lack of compassion and hypocrisy shown by a group of people who claim to represent the God of love. It is time that as the united Church of Christ, we reclaim the love that Jesus showed us not just in words but also in the way we act towards our fellow humans whoever they may be.

Love is not a feeling that we do or do not experience

Love is something we CHOOSE to show to those around us. It must be unconditional and accompanied by acts of compassion and loving kindness that better represent what a feeling or a simple word ever could. Love is not easy, it is sacrificial, it is forgiving, it is self-denying, it is often not returned and it is only when it becomes this hard that we truly experience and demonstrate the love of Jesus.

see also ‘Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you‘