Let your Love..

It is possible not to let possesssions own me, to rest happily in the security that God, not money, can give.

I read a book a long time ago about Mother Teresa. Somebody in the book asked her how she summoned the strength to love so many people. She said she loved people because they are Jesus, each one of them is Jesus, and this is true because it says so in the Bible. And it is also true that this idea contradicts the facts of reality: Everyboday can't be Jesus. There are many ideas within Christian spirituality taht contradict the facts of reality as I understand them. A statement like this offends some Christians because they believe if aspects of their faith do not obey the facts of reality, they are not true. But I think there are all sorts of things our hearts believe that don't make any sense to our heads. Love, for instance; we believe in love. Beauty. Jesus as God.

This is an issue I have with the Christian community. And when I say this, I'm not speaking of all Christian communities. When we talk about love, we talk about an unconditional love. Love thy neighbor, Love me for I have loved you, Love is patient love is kind... " etc. etc. But as much as we hate to admit, the fact of the matter is, Christian love is conditional. You were loved in word, but there was, without question, a social commodity that was being withheld from you until you shaped up.

The problem with Christian community is that we have ethics, we have rules and laws and principles to judge each other against. There is love in Christian community, but it's conditional love. Sure, we call it unconditional, but it isn't. We are raised to believe that there are bad and good people in the world. If people are bad, we automatically put them under 2 categories... if they are bad and rich, they are evil. If they are bad and poor, they are charity. Christianity is always right; we are always looking down on everybody else.

hatred to me, seems like the product of ignorance. I'm tired of biblical ethic being used as a tool with which to judge people rather than heal them.

I remember at one of the old churches I attended, (I've been to at least 6 churches) I was talking about prop 8 to one of my friends. I was expressing my strong support to the gay communities, and that it isn't right to disapprove of people just because they didn't meet our 'Christian' standards. The adults at church overheard my discussion and immediately gave me one of these -_________- looks. They would stare and whisper, stare and whisper. Could you be anymore obvious? I haven't been back to that church since.

How is it that the Christian community constantly puts emphasis on how we need to love one another, love ourselves, and love God, when we can't accept one another? If we can't accept one another, then we are rejecting God. We view liberals, homosexuals, and criminals as a threat to our faith. So we choose to ignore them as part of our community. We miss our opportunity to let our love heal them. We think we're in a battle against the changing generation. What happened to the battle against poverty? battle against hunger? battle against crime? When I talk to my nonbeliever friends, they are just so much more accepting of everything. They talk about the crude, they talk about what's real. It's not that they don't have a filter for such things, but I think we filter too much.

...It's so easy for me to forget that God is not human. Even as Christians we are flawed, I am heavily flawed. I can't look onto people to show me the way.. I have/need to keep reminding myself of God's love, His grace and mercy. It is only through Him we are saved.

Prayer request: Lord, I need Your love to heal me. I need to know that Your love is unconditional.