God is Love

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Right now I’ve got Christian Facebook Friends saying hateful things about homosexuality, and homosexual Facebook Friends saying hateful things about Christianity.  

As I stand here in the middle of the flying Facebook posts, I know only one thing for sure:  

God is love.  

When God came to live among us in human form, he asked us to do just two things for him:  

Love him with all our heart, soul, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves. 

(That’s in the Gospel according to Matthew 22: 37-39). 

Jesus didn’t tell us who to have sex with, or who to marry.  

He didn’t ask for our help in deciding who gets to go to heaven.  

He asked us to love—to love him and to love other people.  

How do we build the Kingdom of God?  Through love.  

How do we share our faith and our heart for God? Through love.  

How do we draw people into the family of God? Through love.  

How do we obey God and live according to His Will?  Through love.  

God will forgive us, and He can redeem and work His good through our mistakes.  

But it’s hard for me to understand why faithful Christians overlook God’s greatest commandment

 (Jesus himself calls it “the greatest commandment”!) 

to focus their energies on condemning children of God they cannot understand and do not approve.  

Let us love one another, for love comes from God.  

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 

(That’s in 1 John 4: 7-8.) 

Perhaps you could ask yourself before posting that next diatribe of personal insults against our President, or that photo of a church sign that condemns the new Supreme Court ruling concerning marriage, or that snarky comment about the person in line ahead of you at the grocery store (guilty!), if your post reflects God’s love.  

With just a little forethought and good judgment, 

we can save Him a lot of work trying to redeem our hatefulness.