It’s Valentine’s Day!
So it seems like a good time to talk about love.
I’ve been brewing this post in my mind for several months now. Each time I begin to write it I stop short. Mostly I was too angry to make sense so I scrapped whatever tirade had made it’s way out of my keyboard. I hate writing and reading angry blog posts. I’m guessing you do too. But when you write, ideas generally won’t go away until you communicate them. I suppose that’s the height of narcissism really. The idea that one must tell others of their opinion. (It’s the kind of thing I make fun of people for doing on Facebook but do myself constantly on this blog. Am I a hypocrite or what?)
So here’s my dilemna. The best I can tell, if you are a Christian the only way you can respond to ANYTHING that happens in the world today is…Love.
Love, Love, Love. It’s our only option it seems.
You see I’m actually all about Love. What I am not on board with is being dictated to love by a society that would not know love if it washed their filthy feet.
When we talk about love, we really seem to be saying “Will you ignore my sin if I ignore yours?” or “Can we just agree to disagree about sin?” or “Can we just pretend sin does not exist?” And more often than not, this is followed by a lesson on Jesus. Look, I can admit there is much about Jesus that I still need to learn. I hope I get closer to him every day until Heaven. But I gotta be honest, I don’t need your Pinterest post about a fantasy Jesus that you created. I don’t need a Facebook primer on the Bible. Justify yourself on social media all you want. I choose not to.
And I choose that path because there is no justification for me without Christ. I highly doubt you know many people that were worse sinners than me. I couldn’t talk my way out of it. None of my arrogant worship of all the things I thought I knew would save me. They still can’t. So you don’t need to lecture me about Jesus and his amazing love. I know full well how Jesus loves. I know how he pursued me, wooed me, won me. I know how undeserving I was and still am. And I know that He loved me when I didn’t even acknowledge my sin much less repent of it.
So here’s a point we can all mostly agree on. Jesus is the MVP of love. And as his followers we need to practice what He preached.
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
John 13:33
I feel confident I could find very few people that would argue with me about this verse. It’s just universally accepted. I wish it was universally lived but that’s a topic for another day.
But let’s look at something else Jesus said about love.
“Teacher, which command in God’s Law is the most important?”
Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list.
But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them.”
Matthew 22:36-40
So here we have biblical support for the idea that the absolute rule for Christians is love. But let’s look again at what Jesus identified as being the ‘most important’. You would have to twist yourself into an intellectual pretzel in order to deny that Jesus is categorically stating here that love for God trumps love for one another.
What does that mean?
Does it mean I get to love God and hate people?
No.
Does it mean I get to judge you for any reason?
Nope.
Does it mean I get to use God’s word as a weapon against you?
Un uh.
What it means is this.
If you ask me to choose between believing what you say or believing what God says, you will lose every time.
It means that my first priority will always be God. No perfection is implied here. Only intention.
And above all it means that I will love my fellow man as much and as hard as I have strength to do so for as long as I live. But I will not hate God just to prove that I love you.
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