Loving people

I enjoy spiritual conversations with people. On multiple occasions the discussion has gone in a direction where my conversation partner has advocated the viewpoint that unconditional or selfless love is the highest guiding moral principle. In theory, I don't disagree. However, I find this tightly packaged, neatly bundled statement to be less than satisfying in several aspects. One is the tacit or explicit assumption that all world religions really just boil down to loving people. This is an oversimplification that manages to simultaneously offend nearly all the religions (except possibly Bhuddism and its "generalized derivatives").

The second dissatisfying aspect is that such a theoretical statement must be grounded in practice to have any significant meaning. There is a popular American saying, "Love is as love does." I believe I will discover love in a much more meaningful way by getting out there and serving the poor alongside my conversation partner than by discussing it at a theoretical level.

I'm learning that I need examples of love in order to really understand it. For me, Jesus is the ultimate example. He loved tremendously. He loved unconditionally. He dared to physically touch the untouchables. He broke through social barriers and engaged in real conversations with people. He met people where they were at and dared to love them. Jesus DID first, then he taught and SAID things about love. Without such practical examples of how Jesus loved and how he engaged with people, his teaching on love is hollow, theoretical, correct but of no practical value--just like the teachers of the law of his day. What did he teach?

Matt 6: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

I am learning that it is really easy to love the people that love me back. Casey, Jade, & Miracle make it especially easy! Jesus taught that even "though you are evil, [you] know how to give good gifts to your children" (Mt 7:11). But how hard it is to love those who are your enemies or who make your life difficult. How hard it is to pray for those who persecute you!

Miracle will visit her birth mother today for the first time in 13 months. I have very mixed feelings about it. It is very difficult for me to pray for this woman. Not because I want bad outcomes for her life, but because I so badly want to adopt Miracle and keep her as part of our family. Yet it changes me to pray for this woman's welfare. It helps me think about what life might be like from her perspective. The guilt, heartache, unfulfillment, and lack of power in her life must frustrate her daily. Today I pray for her to have a happy and joyful visit with Miracle. I pray that she can regain even the hope to change. I pray that she can get to know her Maker, the one who has connected me to her through Miracle. I pray that I can see and understand God's good plan for her life and for Miracle's life (Jer 29). I pray that I can see the good things about Miracle's birth mother and speak positively about her to Miracle. I pray that I can perfectly love just like my Father in heaven.

This weekend, God taught me another lesson on love as I visited the Agape Church of Christ that meets in downtown Portland at Lincoln High School. This group was highly warm, loving, and accepting. They successfully integrated people from a wide swath of life experiences, from the homeless to the highly successful and everywhere in-between. There was frank discussion of the community groups, which included a variety of recovery options. I was very impressed on a multitude of levels. For one, the core group was actually fairly small and yet the setup was rather elaborate to transform a high school cafeteria into a place of worship and fellowship: sound system, video projector, tables laden with donuts, coffee, and fruit, children's toys and programs, all caf tables put away and all the chairs arranged for the group, etc. Beyond this basic level of effort, everyone came to give, encourage, and love. The leaders Ron & Lori Clark are truly ministering to many people and loving them just as Jesus would. They have redeemed the word "minister" to actual mean something real again!

Returning to my "virtual conversation" I introduced above, I hope I am not being judgmental toward my fellow Northwesterners. All I can say is that Ron & Lory Clark's example and especially Jesus' example calls me much much higher than a simple verbal acknowledgement that love is the greatest virtue.

In the early church, apparently the same issue had come up in the area of faith, so the apostle addressed it rather bluntly in James 2:14-19. "¹⁴What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? ¹⁵Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. ¹⁸But someone will say, 'You have faith; I have deeds.' Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. ¹⁹You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder."

Loving people goes so much farther and deeper than I once thought. It is so much harder and I fall so short of true love. Yet it is only by trying that I can see how far I am from loving the way Jesus did. It will truly be the work of a lifetime to come to love others the way Jesus did. The reality is I have no other option if I truly want to follow Jesus as his disciple.

John 13: ³⁴"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

John 15: ¹²My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command.

This obligation feels harsh until I remind myself that Jesus' love is personal. Unless I can see that he first loved me and has done something incredible for me, I will have no love to give.

• 1 John 4: ¹⁹We love because he first loved us.
• 1 John 3: ¹⁶This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

Once I take it personally, I can start to tackle the tough scriptures:

• 1 John 4: ²⁰If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. ²¹And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
• 1 John 3: ¹⁷If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? ¹⁸Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

Today is a good day to love.

God and Creation

Gen 1 & 2 are the classic chapters that describe how God created the world. However, the scriptures abound with references to God's role as Creator. In fact, Creator is one of God's key identities.

Gen 6:7. Here we find the Creator already saddened at what the creation has done with their freedom. The Creator was literally grieved by the creation and regretted making humanity.

Gen 14:19-22. Abram takes an oath and is given a blessing in the name of "God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth." Part of God's "height" (separateness) is the fact that God created everything we can perceive. By contrast, we humans are lowly for we have not created much of anything by comparison.

Dt 32:6. This is the first scripture we encounter in the Bible where an appeal is made to people to behave differently in light of the fact that the LORD (YHWH) created and formed them.

Here are some Psalms that simply praise God for the fact that He created: Ps 89:12,

Here are some scriptures that describe how God is still creating, within the context of human history and within the life of the individual: Ps 51:10, Is 4:5,

Some scriptures ponder the purpose for which God created finite beings: Ps 89:47, Eccl 12:1,

Isaiah makes some particularly poignant appeals to God's role as Creator to show how we can rely on God and express how truly powerful God is and what God can do for you. Is. 40:25-31, Is. 42:1-9 (predicts Jesus), Is. 43:1-7, Is. 45:1-8, 18.

Is. 45:9-12 brings up the warning, "Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground." It is amazing to me that God allows us to use the minds that he gave us to question him! Brilliant scientists spend their entire lives trying to create scenarios that explain how the universe and people came to be that eliminate the need for God. We can discover powerful principles in genetics, evolution, and the Big Bang that match scientific observation. Yet so many fundamental questions remain unanswered. These questions show how pitiful our understanding really is.

• Chimpanzees and humans most certainly have a common ancestor. Scientists have measured our genetic difference at only 2%. But what is in that 2% that gives humans the ability to have morality, consider their purpose in life, strive to achieve greatness, and desire eternity? (Eccl 3:10-11)
  
• With certainty we now know that the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago. But what caused it? Where it did come from? Why was it nonuniform? What sort of universe would we have if the quantum fluctuations had turned out differently?
• We can clone sheep and other species. But do we have a diagram for all the 3D chemical reactions that must occur? When will we be able to clone without taking advantage of an already-existing cellular infrastructure? That would be truly impressive!
• Where did life first arise? What instigated the first cell? How long until scientists create their first functional cell that can live and reproduce? Why do all living cells have a preferred stereochemistry (everything is "right-handed" instead of "left-handed")? Where did that preference arise since the Big Bang postulates that all matter was completely homogenous at the beginning?! Yet let's not forget that God has gifted nearly every human being with the ability to procreate, even if they're retarded, on drugs/alcohol, very young (Mary) or even very old (Elizabeth).
  

Creation of a new future: Is 65:17-18. This is a very comforting thought that God knows our greatest desires and is creating a place of peace for us.

God mourns the choices of the king of Tyre, also apparently Lucifer, both of whom God created: Ezek. 28:11-19

God created marriage at the beginning and Jesus appeals to this when he reminds the Jewish intellectuals of the heart behind this sacrosanct institution: Matt. 19:1-8.

In Jesus, God began a new work of creating a people for himself, eager to do what is good: Eph 2:10, Eph 2:14-21, Eph 4:20-24, Col 3:5-14, James 1:18.

Romans 1:18-31 contains one of the Bible's most powerful indictments of the human race. Idol worship is perhaps the greatest possible insult to God, where people choose to worship the created things (sun, men/women's bodies, nature, etc.) and things of their own creating (jobs, sports, money, social structures, intellectual pursuits, cars/houses, etc.) rather than the Creator. If each of us are honest, everyone of us has succumbed to idol worship in one form or another and it is a difficult sin to root out of our lives.

The New Testament contains some powerful reminders of who did the creating: Col. 1:15, Rev 4:8-11, Rev 10:5-6.

Lastly, it interesting to observe how Paul uses the argument that everything God created is good. It is humans that assign a particular meaning to certain objects and therefore they become "bad." See 1 Tim 4:1-5. Paul does not advocate that people stop listening to their consciences (quite the opposite, in fact--see Rom 14, esp. v23).