Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Heartbreak

For centuries Christians have been at the epicenter of pain, from before the Crusades to someone carelessly flinging a judgemental word at their neighbor today.

As I grow in my faith, more and more I hear stories about so-called 'followers' of Christ causing more pain and heartache than I can possibly imagine, much of this through the rejection of someone.
Frankly, there are too many verses to quote from the Bible about loving one's neighbor etc. to do it proper justice. And yet I hear about a priest sending anonymous death threats to one of his young parishioners who just declared his homosexuality to his family and friends; a church cutting off a family member, a fellow child of God, who committed adultery; a girl that carries a past filled with misguided beliefs and dark ritual hearing slanderous rumors created about herself by those she thought her friends.

So much pain. If I feel like this when I hear about these sorts of things, I can't begin to imagine how God must feel.

I have so many questions for these people. Why do you feel they are not worthy of your love if they are worthy of the love of God? What gives us the right to judge them if one deems them 'unworthy' of God's love? The Bible commands us not to judge others. Possibly one of my favorite parts in the Bible is of the woman who was to be stoned for adultery, Jesus halts her persecutors who came in the name of the law by asking them "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." No-one threw one measly pebble at the woman.

Everyone sins, no sin is worse than another in the eyes of God. Sounds scandalous? Not really, it's because He doesn't care.

God came down in the form of man and Jesus and died on the cross for all of us, not just the ones who go to church on Sunday, not just the ones who go to a certain kind of church, not just the ones who met their conversion quota for the week, but every single last person who has and who ever will exist. It doesn't matter how much someone has 'sinned', He loves every single one of us regardless of what we have done or will do.

I ask again, who are we to deny someone love? It's not as though that will keep God from loving them, but it will certainly hurt Him when we do not demonstrate love the way He intended. It was God that gave us the ability to love in the first place.

No-one is unworthy, no-one is not deserving. Please love.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That hurts my heart to hear of those things happening in our world. You are absolutely right... since when are we to be the judges in life and scrutinize anyone for what we may consider "scandalous?" You've brought another thought into my photographic attention... thank you!

Anonymous said...

When you become a follower of Jesus, you give up the right to choose whom you will love. "For God so loved the world." The heart of this post is something really good: we should never deny anyone love. However, I'm afraid that you might associate love much too closely with the avoidance of pain. That story of the woman caught in adultary has long been important to me because I want to do justice the way Jesus did. Yes, He rescued her and shamed her accusers, but He also looked at her when it was all over and said "Stop sinning!". Jesus did the same thing to Jerusalem, longing for it to change and follow His way of peace, and at the same time warning of the destruction to come if they refused to love their Roman enemies. Speaking the truth in love is what we've got to do, even though it sometimes hurts and causes feelings of rejection.