Fall of Love and the Rise of Pharisees

Recently we all gathered for a joint service of the two churches my dad has. Once every few months, when there happens to be a fifth Sunday at the end of the month, we join together and have a special service. Last time we watched a video called Indescribable. If you have never heard of it, I highly recommend looking at the bookstores, or online retailers if that is your way, and check it out. It is the first of several talks in Louie Giglio's Passion Series.

Just briefly, the video is filmed at one of Chris Tomlin's concerts, on the Indescribable Tour. Louie talks about astronomy and how simply amazing this universe is that God created us to live in. It talks about light-years, galaxies, and the glory of God. It brings it all together with a bit of salty liquid seeping from your eyes.

We watched the second video, How Great is Our God, and I began to think about things. In it Louie talks about how small we are, by comparing the earth and sun to other stars. Then he goes farther down to the sub-atomic scale. It makes you remember how "fearfully and wonderfully made" we are.

Through Christ, all things are held together. But it is through people that we actively tear them apart. Take for example my guild. There were a small amount of us, who used to be leaders in the guild, but have been pushed aside and new people have taken over. While we were leading, our guild began to grow and grow, until we got to the point that we now had a dozen people wanting to do raids every week. Though these people were nice, they began to push out the small group of us who might not have been really into raiding, putting a divide in the guild until it split.

They were nice people, but instead of loving and supporting like a guild should, they wanted to get rid of the weaker people. Instead of helping the weak get strong, they left the guild. I feel this is a lot like the point where Christians need work, we care and are nice, but we don't really offer love to everyone.

There are many nice people out there, and many of them and many more people as a whole, help each other out, but helping and loving are not the same thing nor is being nice and helping. I am nice to many people, but do I always show them love?  I know I do not. I do want to love people more, but I have a hard time when I see how people act, how they treat others, and even when I see their intelligence level.

From sowhatfaith.com and a study of how people who identify
themselves as Christians are more like the Pharisees than they
are like Christ. I sadly agree with the graph.
Here is a link to the article.

I have seen people be nice to your face, but then hear the whispers behind your back. I see how often they refuse to work together to better each other and the group as a whole. Christians can come together for something bigger than they could do on their own, yet they bicker and fight because it is not how they want it.

I recently joined into a online Christian chat room. I used my screen name that I have used for 15 years. I got on and was greeted quickly by the other people in the room. Then, and I don't know if it was a moderator or just someone else, but they asked me to change my name. I told them I would not, I would rather leave, but thanks for the show of love and promptly left. This is the taste that Christians seem to give. We are friendly, but if you are different, or you have a difference of opinion, we need to pull out our holy than thou card and say you can't do this or that.

I will not join that chat room again, I am sure there are some very nice people in it, but why would I go back in when the first thing I saw was that they cannot accept me for me. Thankfully this is not the case with all Christians. And is most definitely not the way of Christ. Many times we saw Jesus go to the sinners, love the sinners for who they were, accept them, and ask that they love him and follow him. If we should be modeling our lives after Jesus, then we should also be accepting of different people.

I know I am not the most loving person out there, but whatever your sin is, I have one to match it. I am a sinner, yet I am still a saint thanks to the grace and love of Jesus. Someday I hope that the work that I do to try to make me a more loving person, will pay off and I can show people how much Jesus loves them. Because that is what this is all about, share the love of Jesus with as many people that are willing to listen and praise God every hard step of the way.

Maybe this will be the generation that shows the world Christians are loving people, not hateful, bigoted jerks who picket funerals and complain about how bad people are sinning. Maybe this will be the generation that will accept that we are all sinners and love everyone despite the sin and love who the people are. Maybe this will be the generation that moves that big bubble on the graph to the opposite corner.