Loving The Sinner?

I am completely dismayed when I hear Christians complain about those who are advocating for something Christians don't agree with for being intolerant or trying to suppress the Christian's right to speech, especially when those Christians are working to limit the rights of those they oppose! And the tired old cliché "love the sinner, hate the sin" is wearing extremely thin.

Right now in the State of Tennessee we have a Republican governor who is facing a growing outcry among county parties because he's hired a Muslim and has retained openly gay people to work in his administration. These county Republican councils have drafted resolutions to condemn the Governor for doing such. That doesn't sound much like loving the sinner to me. What these people are saying is, we don't like what you are and believe you're a sinner so therefore you have no right to a job in our government.

The saddest fact is that many Christians believe we live in a theocracy; a Christian nation. We do not! We live in a democratic republic. Was our nation founded on Christian principles? Yes! But those principles are, and are stated as, the freedom of anyone to worship or belong to any religion they choose, not just Christianity. See, our founding fathers were well aware that Christians can be the most hateful of all when it comes to religious freedoms so they enshrined in the Constitution that all men are created equal and all men are entitled to the same rights and freedoms regardless of their choices regarding whom/where to worship, etc.

Even Jesus taught us that if someone doesn't hear the message we present, we are not to try to force it on them or try to remove them from society, He said we were to walk away and leave them alone. Leaving them alone doesn't mean trying to get them fired from their jobs or kicked out of their housing.

I have no doubts of what type person Jesus was referring when He said that on Judgment Day He will say to some who claim to have followed Him: "depart from Me, I never knew you", because Jesus was all about showing LOVE, not hate, fear and bigotry!