Love In Such A Way

Matthew 5:38-48

I've been a part of a Sunday afternoon study group at my church for close to 5 months now. The study we're doing is called Living the Questions and is for those of us who have a difficult time understanding the literal translations of the bible and the fundamental teachings of some churches. What this study does is show us the historical settings of the stories in the bible and how the development of dogma influences current Christian thinking.

It's an interesting study, challenging our beliefs of topics such as the risen Christ and the virgin birth, as well as current views on women in the church, homosexuality, and the second coming of Jesus. The one thing this study has taught most of us is that there are many thoughts about these topics as much as there are people in the room. It's been refreshing, if not affirming, to the study group that we can all have varying degrees of belief about the topics and still be accepting of one another's views.

A few weeks ago the topic was A Kingdom Without Walls. That particular topic dealt with bringing everyone we meet into the love of God through Christ; also called evangelism. However, we weren't shown how to approach someone and ask if they've been saved then tell them if they weren't Christian they would be headed towards certain death in this life and the next one, rather we were to simply be with people in their everyday lives and find a way to share ourselves. It was pointed out that Jesus never asked people what their religious affiliation was, rather he just found ways to be a presence in their lives.

This type of evangelism was phrased as "Loving in such a way as to not make anyone your enemy." As we discussed that phrase we began to recognize that in today's culture the term "Christian" holds with it a lot of bad connotations; pushy, in your face, unwilling or unable to compromise, judgmental, uncaring, unaccepting.

These were words we didn't see ourselves as, nor did we want these words to identify the kind of Christian we are. Instead we want to be known as Christians who love unconditionally and are willing to share our views on Christianity as much as we want to hear your views on whatever your religion is, even if it's a different kind of Christianity.

That kind of environment is what we saw as being in a place where we could love one another without creating enemies. In other words, we would be able to love our enemies to the point where we would no longer be enemies. We understood what Jesus meant when he said the sun shines on everyone as much as the rain falls on us as well.

We are all one people under one love. All we need to do is understand what that means and help change the world, one enemy at a time.