Promote Love..or Hatred?

I continue working on re-reading "No Perfect People Allowed". One of the statements Burke makes drives to the very core of what spiritual seekers want to know: do we promote hatred, or do we promote love?

The essence of this question can be very challenging for most of us christians (yes, I mean me, too). It's easy to look down at (judge) someone whose lives are very different from our own.

The people that we are looking to invite to church may party and drink, have same sex partners/preferences, or have followed different religions/philosophies. And their immediate expectation is that we as christians are going to judge them & not want to have anything to do with them.

To be fair, unfortunately, more often than not they are right. I know I for one have been guilty of passing judgement based on how someone is dressed or talks or acts. As human beings, we all have done this, & will do it again. But here's the rub; if I am going to do the work that God has told me I should be doing, then it is an absolute must for me to do everything I can to overcome my sinful ways of judging others.

This is the only possible way for me to be open, loving & to reach out to others. To seek intentional relationships, just like Jesus did. No, that doesn't mean compromising my values or watering down Jesus' message. What it does mean is, for me to at some point have the opportunity to share this message of loving each other unconditionally, is only possible by first letting others see me living it.

I would love to be able to tell you that I am successful doing this all the time. Not so. I blow it more than I get it right. But, sometimes I get it right. Those are the times that make all the other times of fumbling and bumbling worth while. Those are the times I "get it".

Man, that's what really fires me up as we do the work to plant a new church and share in reaching out to those in the community... more and more experiences of "getting it"