So. . . I was sitting on a park bench the other day with a dear older Christian lady, when she asked me "Did you see those men getting married on the news the other day? Isn't that just sickening?"
Before I could utter a response, my eyes met the eyes of the woman sitting on the other side of us. I immediately recognized an old acquaintance of mine whom I know to be a lesbian.
I wanted to melt, literally. I actually thought, "if I could just melt right now and drip through the slats on the seat of this park bench and just puddle on the ground underneath, well that would be fantastic."
So I have been thinking, a lot actually, how Christians can be so judgmental in the name of Jesus, am I that way, and how would Jesus respond to gay marriage???
Why do Christians think their job is to judge?
In reality, Jesus never intended us to judge anyone at all, but only to love.
My proof?
Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-38 when he was telling everyone that there are two commandments that are more important than anything else, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."
Jesus not only says here that we have to love our neighbors, but he basically says that if you aren't going to obey these two commandments there isn't really a need to worry about the rest.
When someone asked Jesus to define "neighbor," Jesus tells this story in the book of Luke about a Samaritan helping a Jew who was mugged. The Jews and the Samaritans hated each other. Jesus was telling them that the definition to neighbor is anyone and everyone.
In John 8, some Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught in adultery. They were ready to stone her, as the Law said they should. Jesus walks through the crowd of these angry, Jewish, Godly men who thought that they were obeying the Law. He walked up to this naked, shivering, sinful woman looked into her eyes and turned to the crowd. He said, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her."
One by one, the men dropped their stones and left. He looked at the woman and said,"Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? . . .Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."
hmmmmmmmmm. . .
Christians have got to remember that until a person accepts the Bible as truth for their life, they can not be expected to live the way the Bible says to live.
Sometimes I am embarrassed that I am a Christian. Sometimes, when I meet someone new, it is one of the last things I tell them instead of the first. Sometimes, I don't tell them at all, I wait until it slips out.
Why is that?
(Why is it that in any movie or TV show, Christians are portrayed as idiots, assholes, or nutcases?)
It is not at all because I am embarrassed of my faith or my morals or of Jesus himself. I am in love with Jesus. He is my Savior.
I have also found that most people are okay with Jesus just not okay with Christians. I have also found that sometimes, a lot of times, I feel the same way.
My conclusion. . .
I don't want to be known as a Christian anymore because somehow, in our culture, most of the time, Christian has come to mean something that I am not.
What am I?
In John 13: 34-35, Jesus says, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
That is what I want to be, what I am. . . I am a lover of Jesus and a lover of my "neighbor," of "all people."
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