Saturday, June 16, 2012

Loving, Forgiving, Father God

I love to see posts from people discussing the nature of God and extolling His gifts, mercy and grace to us. Those posts that tell of His never ending love, His abundant grace, His compassionate and all-encompassing forgiveness which has no end. My heart and soul cry out in praise and adoration when I see the direct results of God's influence in those lives and the manifestation of His boundless mercies toward any person.

Conversely, my heart is broken when some of those people do not apply the very virtues they highlight and exalt which God has shown to them to every person on the planet. They somehow believe that God only loves, forgives, cares for, is compassionate to, understands, accepts, satisfies, heals, gives loving-kindness to, renews, is the righteousness for and sovereign of those who believe exactly the way they do.

As human beings, we sometimes get into the mindset that our way of thinking or believing is the ONLY correct way to believe/think. I guess it makes people feel they are part of an exclusive club or somehow better than the average Joe. But, it is pure arrogance to believe that we, and only we, hold the truth of the goodness, mercy and grace of God to the exclusion of anyone who doesn't agree with our philosophies, guidelines and rules.

I literally cringe when I see, or hear, those from Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas holding up signs or screeching how God hates "fags" and how God is punishing the US military men and women in foreign wars because He is punishing this nation. While their beliefs are Biblically based, they have taken scripture out of context and/or misused scripture. One of their mistakes is the belief that God will punish an entire nation. While God did, in fact, punish the nation of Israel in the Old Testament for certain acts or the lack of action, the basis of that punishment falls under the Law of Moses, which we are no longer under. When Christ rose from the dead and offered salvation to us, He made salvation an individual action and relationship. Look through the Old Testament, even, and you will see where God only brought destruction on other nations when they attacked Israel, not for the action or inaction of a few of that nations people.

Too often, today, we are trying to apply Old Testament and/or Law of Moses formulae to our lives today. That makes me shake my head and want to ask people, 'what part of the Law being fulfilled do you not quite grasp?'

Each and every person on this planet, today, will have to stand before Jesus on the throne of Judgment and answer for our actions, inaction, attitude, idle words, sins of commission, sins of omission, obedience, faith and love. I firmly believe the very first thing Christ will ask upon our stepping up to the throne of Judgment will be, "how well did you love?" The point is, however, that we will not have to answer for anything that others did or did not do nor for how well others loved or did not love. Only one specific type of individual will have to answer in any shape, form or fashion as to others. That individual type is a pastor or leader in the church. And even then they will not have to answer for the sins of their congregation unless they taught that congregation to sin and based that teaching upon their knowing misinterpretation of God's will.

Jesus gave us a NEW commandment, which if you really think about it, encompasses all the original 10: "love thy neighbor as thyself" or "love thy neighbor as I have loved you." If we were to be obedient to that new commandment, we wouldn't lie to or about another person because we love them as we love ourselves; we wouldn't steal from them because of our love for them; we wouldn't murder them because we love them; and the list goes on and on.

The most basic truth of this entire matter is this: we cannot see into the hearts of any other person therefore we cannot judge them. I know many who will counter that Jesus told us to judge by their fruits, and oddly enough, it is those who are judging others to condemnation who will use that argument, however, they're not judging people by their fruits, they're judging them by their actions. The fruits we are to look for in that statement of judging another are: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. When we stand in judgment of someone based upon what we perceive to be the sin in their lives, we're not looking to see if they love others, whether they are peacemakers, kind, good, faithful, gentle and of good repute. If we were to look at each person to see if those fruits are manifesting in their lives, we would be unable to pass any kind of harsh judgment on most.

We need to get back to the basics, which are: loving one another as God has loved us, forgiving one another as we have been forgiven, helping one another in time of need and most importantly treating each and every person on the planet the way we, ourselves, want to be treated. As Galatians 5:23 says, "against such there is no law."

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