But What About The Love

A lot of people talk about love. I do it all the time. Jesus tells us to love God and to love others so we hold that up as theme to live by. I preach it and I believe in it.

It is not just Christians who feel that way about love either. From "make love, not war" to "all you need is love" our culture has been bombarded with the love message. We talk about it all the time.

Now if we would just do it. In reality it has always been easy to love those we like but very difficult to love those we don't. I'm not just talking about those who are different from us or are "hard to love" either. I'm talking about those we strongly disagree with. How can we preach love and then not show it to those we disagree with. Our inconsistency leaves a foul stench.

There are several of my fellow pastors that I've disagreed with on a variety of issues. I'm not talking about a disagreement on a vague theological point where we agree to disagree. I'm talking about people I'm angry with. People that I see as pig-headed, obstinate, hateful, and even down-right unchristian. I'm sure they are wrong and I'm sick and tired of their blatant attempts to be an obstacle to the Church. Even writing this makes me angry.

But what happened to love?

I hate the fact that I can preach about our need to love everyone and not be judgmental and then turn around and hate and judge others. I'm not alone because I know that this same scenario is replicated in all sorts of situations by all sorts of well-intentioned people. It is just plain tough.

I would try to justify my hypocrisy except for one thing. Any reason I can give for me not to love someone else is a reason that Jesus could use against me. I guess I just need to learn how to love people I hate. Dang it.