Love vs. Being Right: Who wins?
I have another confession to make, I used to always have to be right! I am a very competitive person. I like to win. Cassandra will tell you that when we first started dating I would get in arguments with people who I thought were not acting according to the Bible. I was a typical Pharisee. I'm not sure what changed in me. I think I began growing more in my faith and realized that "LOVE" was more important than "Being Right."
Don't get me wrong, we should stand for the truth. But here is the problem. People don't listen to you until they know you care about them. I'm concerned because I don't see as much love in churches as the world needs. We are too busy "bunkering" in our safe buildings to keep us away from "sinners." We have "Family Life Centers" so we don't have to see scantly clad people or the language that "seekers" use. We have "Fall Festivals" instead of Halloween but our un-churched neighbors just think we are snobs. We put corny saying on church signs that aren't relevant to anyone outside of church. We have our own Christian sub-culture. We place our Christian values on those who don't believe in our God. What we do is anger them and turn them away from the God we want them to meet. We want to be right
We even have churches who fight with other churches because we feel our church is right! The song says they will know we are Christians by our love. Where is it? I am very concerned about what I am seeing.
There are a few Non-negotiables that we should agree on: God is the only God. He is in the form of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus died for our sins and if we trust in Him we will spend eternity in Heaven. There is a real Hell. Those who don't accept God's grace will spend eternity there. We must tell others about Jesus so they won't spend eternity in Hell. We share Jesus not because we are right but because we love Him and those we share His story with.
I Corinthians 13 tells us how important Love is. It is the most important thing. Jesus said we must love God with all we have and love our neighbor as ourselves. Nowhere do I see we should fight with others because we are right. Nowhere in the Bible do I see politics being the answer to the woes of the world. LOVE is the answer.
We can argue about Inerency vs. Infallibility. We can argue over Calvanism vs. Arminianism. We can argue about "tongues." We can argue about styles of music. We can argue about Mega churches. We can argue about a lot of things, but what does it accomplish if we don't love others. I believe that Love is the Answer. Not just any love, but the love of Jesus. Jesus displayed the ultimate love when He died for our sins. That is true Love. Love wins!
posted by Kevin Bussey at 12/24/2005 10:53:00 PM
1 Comments:
Bill,
You are right. Unfortunately some people don't know how to have mutual respect for one another. Have a Happy New Year!
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