All You Need Is Love
If you read the title and now you're singing the Beatle's song, you're welcome!
Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the commandment to love our brothers and sisters in Christ. It has been a consistent theme in my readings in the weeks following Easter. Versions of "your love for each other is the proof that you follow Jesus" is EVERYWHERE! I had forgotten how ubiquitous it is in the New Testament. It makes me ask two questions:
1. Is it repeated so often because it is so unusual?
2. How are we doing?
The answer to number one is certainly yes. It is the natural state of sinful humanity to be evil and treat others cruelly. Rape is our natural state. Murder is our natural state. Slavery is our natural state. Abuse is our natural state.
And so, the answer to number two is "not so well." Look at church history. The Spanish Inquisition. The Crusades. "Well, that's just the Roman Catholic Church. It got better after the Reformation!" Oh really? The Salem Witch trials? The religious wars? The universal persecution of the Anabaptists? It was centuries of "if you don't believe exactly the way I do, then I have the right to maim or kill you."
"Oh, but it's better today! We are more enlightened." Jesse shared a little of this in his blog, but I have been in church since I was born. I have been in dozens of churches and many different types of churches, from liturgical to charismatic. My experience is that truly loving churches are the exception, not the rule... and even when they are internally loving, that love rarely extends to believers in other types of churches.
I don't say this because I'm upset. I say this because things cannot change unless we look at reality. People often bewail the fact that more people aren't in church. Might I suggest that one reason is because they can get anger, bitterness, pettiness, and gossip in the world... AND sleep in on Sunday. Why would they want to come to church?
Things will not change unless we change them. And it starts with me. How am I loving my brothers and sisters? That is weighing heavily on my heart. I hope it does yours as well.
Maybe the Beatles had it right.
SONGS FOR SUNDAY
Raise A Hallelujah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2XtRuPfaAU
Goodness of God
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvSuGyJQ6oM
Build My Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1Rm1IQu368
Great Are You Lord