I’ve had quite a few conversations going in my head recently, but one of them is how to love people who don’t know Jesus when they are already deeply offended by those of faith.
I’m not talking about all people who don’t know Jesus, but increasingly I’m hearing of (or getting to know) people who have only heard hate from Christians or the Church in general and therefore are beginning to hate in return.
If you want a book that discusses the topic, you might enjoy Talk the Walk by Steve Brown.
After much contemplation, I’ve decided that the truth lies here: God loves people. Not just people as a group, but each individual…and so should we. We don’t have a right to lump people as a category. We could say that “conservatives are….” or “liberals are…” or “people who sin in ‘this way’ are…” but that just isn’t true. No two people are alike. When we see people as simply a part of their larger people group, we fail to see them as Jesus does. More than that, I think we de-humanize them and see them as a concept instead of as an individual.
When God didn’t rail at Adam and Eve. Instead, He talked with them, asked good questions, and sewed them clothes.
I suspect that when Jesus had dinner with those the Pharisees hated (although they probably didn’t define it that way) and the law said were “unclean”, he did a lot of listening and a little bit of talking. When he talked, he didn’t water down the truth. But he didn’t get defensive either – he sat as one ‘with’ the person and examined the truth with them instead of one on the side of truth looking (down) at a sinner.
We do that though. We become defensive when others are offended by the truth and stop being on their side. God is always on people’s side – even when we are offended by Him. The whole metanarrative of the Bible is that of God seeking a relationship with humans.
This is how we love people – by getting to know them and seeing life from their perspective – but we don’t stop there. A drowning person doesn’t need you to just identify with them, they need a safe way to get to shore. What might this look like in your world?
I need to improve on this. What about you?
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