Friends and Enemies

This is a tangent thought from my last post...

Jesus said, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."

This got me thinking, is there a difference in the way we love our friends, versus the way we love our enemies? Jesus commanded us to love our enemies, precisely because everyone loves their friends, regardless of religious background. Jesus seemed to set up an alternate kingdom, a deeper understanding of love in general, that extends to those from whom we don't necessarily get any love in return... So it would seem more noble or true to say, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his enemies."... But that seems weird, and bottom-line, isn't what Jesus said.

I'm confused. Did Jesus make the statement simply because He was with the disciples, His friends? It makes sense that He was alluding to the Cross... which is ALSO trippy, because the Bible says, while we were yet sinners and enemies of God, Christ died for us. THAT'S how deep His love extended to bring us back. He laid down His life for us as enemies... but as friends, too? Weird.

There's obviously a difference between the way we love our friends and the way we love our enemies. There just is. It doesn't take effort to love our friends; we are drawn to them, similar to them, and have things in common with them.

I guess my question, rooted in this confusion, is: which is greater, loving your friends or loving your enemies? And is there biblical grounds for the difference? Are we supposed to pursue a love that doesn't distinguish between friend or foe? Or is there a sweetness between friends that is rooted in God and deeper than the love that we are supposed to have for our enemies?

Any thoughts? Am I just over-thinking this?

It's All About Love

I apologize ahead of time if this post gets confusing or heretical =)

In church yesterday, Clay read from John 15. Jesus is talking to His disciples and He uses the whole vine/branches analogy to explain, in one sense, our relationship with Him. Everyone in that time would be real familiar with the analogy and the pictures that it would bring to mind.

It's a fairly logical thought progression that Jesus walks them through. God is the gardener, Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. As healthy branches connected to the vine, we should bear fruit. How do we bear fruit (whatever the fruit may be)? By staying connected to the vine, drawing our nutrients and life-giving sap from the vine. How do we "remain" and "abide" in the vine? How do we stay connected to Jesus' life-giving fruit-producing... vine-ness? Jesus says we do that by obeying His commands. Okay. My first instinct is to switch into super-christian mode, ready to tackle the long list of do's and don't's... Jesus instead sums up the essence of the commandments and says, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you." Love each other. This keeps coming up lately in my thoughts, in snippets from books or articles, in sermons and conferences, and conversations... We've really done a bang-up job of distracting ourselves from what Christianity is supposed to be about. We're missing something deep. At least, that's how I feel. It isn't about being really upright and moral; it isn't about believing a specific set of proclamations. It is about loving each other. And I'm not talking about a 60's hippie love fest sorta thing. I'm talking about self-less, sacrificial, unconditional love and compassion for everyone and each one around us. The gospel of Jesus at its core is not simply, "Believe that Jesus died for your sins so He can forgive you and you can go to heaven". It seems like the gospel, the "good news" and the core commandment of what it means to follow Jesus, is to love each other. The impetus for loving each other, the source of that command is Jesus' sacrificial love for us on the cross. I don't know if I'm articulating this well... The cross enables us to live the life of love that Jesus calls us to. It is completely necessary. Crucial. But it is not the end point, like I feel most evangelical churches seem to teach and focus on. Just believing that Jesus was the Son of God and died for our sins is not enough. I don't mean we need to do something to earn our salvation... I'm saying our individualistic salvation is not the main point - we are called, saved, rescued and adopted into God's family to live like Him, to love each other and advance His kingdom of love in the midst of a spiritual kingdom of darkness and sorrow and pain and heartache. The cross puts to death in us all that separates us from the Vine, IN ORDER THAT we can become part of His movement of love, as corny as that sounds.

I am, in no way, suggesting we can earn our salvation by loving people enough. I'm simply saying that our salvation is not for our own selfish consumption. God has saved us INTO something grand, not just our own selfish little ticket out of hell. In saving us, through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, God has called us into His kingdom, to love each other. Not simply to sit back and relax now that we aren't on the boat that's going down, you know?

I'm not convinced that I explained my thoughts there well. Really, what I'm saying for my own life, is that I see a shift happening. The way the gospel of Jesus is lived out is by genuinely, selflessly loving the people around me, "one face at a time".

And, hold onto your seats, this has got me thinking about the concept of sin. We Christians typically think of sin as right/wrong, black/white, do/don't. It's a sin to get drunk. It's a sin to have sex outside of marriage. It's a sin to steal. It's a sin to murder. Et cetera. I am wondering... what if the essence of sin is anything that is unloving? In John 15, Jesus says, basically, if you love me, obey me (and I know He says that again somewhere else in the new testament...). What if that is a GOOD thing? At first glance, it sounds tyranical. If God loved me, why would He order me to do something? You know? BUT what if our view of love is so skewed, so tainted by original sin or whatever, that we are missing the very truth about what love is? If we loved each other, we would submit to each other, and serve each other and meet each others' needs willingly with affection and joy. Maybe our resistence to obeying God's commands in general is a sign that we don't actually love Him? Maybe that's what Adam and Eve's deal in the garden of Eden was rooted in - they didn't obey out of their love for God. They let something else motivate their decision.

It just seems so crazy and simple to me... Jesus' sums up the entire law and the prophets and commands, in this: "Love each other, the way you've seen Me love you." Sin, then, is being unloving towards God and the people around me.

And if we truly want to be close to God, to remain in His love and experience it and roll around in it, He says we do that by loving each other. We experience Him when we selflessly love people.

And that's all for now. That didn't feel very coherent... But I wanted to write these thoughts down. Maybe I should have broken it down into chunks... Oh well. Goodnight. Intentionally love someone tomorrow.

Loving God

"The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?"

- God Is The Gospel, John Piper

There's a vast difference in believing in something and loving it. I'm quick to say I believe in God. Most people are. But what if that's not what it's about? What if God is a real person, and He doesn't want His existence to be merely acknowledged? We as humans have this insatiable desires to be desired and wanted and to belong and be cherished. What if that's rooted in God? What if God's desire for us is that we actually find Him beautiful and satisfying? What if being close to God actually makes all the other good things in life pale in comparison?

What haunts me is, what if it's not just a "what if"? What if belief isn't good enough? The Bible says that the demons believe in God and shudder. They certainly won't be with God in heaven. How many of us have been deceived, however unintentionally, into thinking that believing in God's existence and being a good person is what it means to be a Christian? What if being a Christian is solely rooted in whether or not you really are in love with God and prefer Him over anything else this life has to offer? How many of us would be able to say that's true of ourselves? I know I can't say that with much confidence. So many other things clearly take precedence. I give God my leftovers. I fit Him in when it's convenient.

I don't feel guilt-ridden with this line of thinking. It just makes me long to love God like that, because that's the first and greatest commandment that Jesus focused on. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart." I want to love God with all my heart, not little pieces of it.

Following Your Passions

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/16/bregman.economy/index.html


Very interesting advice for those in this recession that have lost their jobs due to layoffs, etc. It definitely begs the question of what is most important to you: making money and buying lots of things that will bring a measure of happiness and security, or pursuing the risk and adventure and probable hardships that go along with pursuing a dream or passion that you've had and figuring out a way to make a living off of it...

I feel like a lot of younger people will agree with this mindset and shout cheers of affirmation, while any older readers will shake their heads with hesitation, quick to warn the idealistic naive to be more practical. That's a generational stereotype I have in my head... If you disagree, please feel free to set the record straight!

Christianity in a Post-christian Culture

I've been realizing lately, through several conversations and things I've read, that America is increasingly post-christian, that is, biblically illiterate. Those generations of previous decades grew up in churches, whether they were actively "following Jesus" or not, the cultural landscape was one of church-going, modest families. It helped prolong our idea that this is a "christian nation". But more and more, I'm learning that my generation or, probably more accurately, the generation following me, isn't growing up with any kind of church-background. They aren't being forced to experience Sunday school and flannel graphs and choirs and communion. They don't know the stories of Gideon and his army, or Moses and the burning bush, or the wee little man Zacchaeus who climbed the Sycamore tree to see Jesus.

I've gotten really used to trying to deconstruct peoples' negative impression of Jesus that they learned from imperfect churches... But I'm starting to wonder what it looks like to tell people about Jesus that have few, if any, misconceptions about him. "Evangelism" as it has been practiced over the past few decades has become out-dated and rarely effective (except in the rare instances when God moves through them despite them), precisely because calling someone to "make a decision for Christ" used to mean more to a culture that knew the Bible stories and the Gospel of Jesus through their church-going sensibilities. They had the knowledge to inform a decision that will shatter your future in ways you can never fathom beforehand. Eddie Gibbs, of Fuller Theological Seminary, said he hopes those who have a 10-minute conversation with someone about Christ and then urges them to make a decision for Christ there on the spot don't approach their dating lives in the same way! Christianity, following Jesus Christ, is a life-long, world-shattering commitment that CAN'T be truly entered into lightly, without counting the cost first, etc.

Understanding that our culture now lacks the biblical background to allow people to count the cost of following Christ before urging them to make that decision is going to be a large factor that we have to wrestle with if we want to effectively communicate the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm not sure what that looks like yet. The message is the same, for sure, but the method of communicating it is constantly shifting. Our culture has shifted and is shifting further towards post-christian. How should we respond?

What are your thoughts? Does that make sense?