A Revolutionary Love (Part1)

I am back!!!

kind of...

What up everybody! I found a way around the funkiness of my blog. So... here we go.

I was driving along on the west end of Chico (A sort of run down part of town and where all the college students live) some time ago and saw a gigantic billboard with huge white words among a black background that read:

"if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your
sins." - Jesus

What kind of witness is that to a dying world of who Christ is? Come on! Who had the gall to think that this would make more people come to church? If you had no clue who Christ was and were going along one day and read this sign, what would you think? Not only does it come off cold and heartless, but they took it completely out of context as well. The scripture they are quoting is from John 8:24. In this part Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees (mega-religious Jews, the ones that wanted to kill Him) in the treasury and they are asking who he was (he had already told them before) He was telling them how they were of this world and he was not and how Him and the Father were one. He was speaking to the ones who knew the law of God, the "church leaders" if you will. The Pharisees were more into the religion of their time than the relationship that God had wanted of them. They could not see beyond the words of the law. They forgot that the law had meaning as well. Verse 52 of chapter 8 reads... " if anyone keeps of My word, he will never taste of death. "

It seems at times we Christians can get so caught up on our little "crusades" we almost forget about anything else but whether or not xyz will do abc. Or if xyz can marry xyz. We forget the great commission and what Jesus has taught us to do. We picket clinics, rally around court buildings, we just have to buy that sticker for our car so people will know exactly what we think, we determine who should be "allowed" in our little church by how good they are, and we put up stupid billboards that basically say "YOU SUCK, I DON'T -GOD" Maybe it is because above all of these things we forget that Jesus said in John 13:

"...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..."

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul writes:

"...If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prohecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing...."

Check out the first verse: "...just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples..." God tells us that people will know that we are His by our love for one another. What we show on this earth is what others perceive our faith to be about. Are the teachings of Jesus Christ those of the cold-hearted or of the compassionate? We could protest things until we are blue in the face but Paul reminds us that if we do not have love, we are a clanging cymbal. We become nothing but white noise in the background of life... More to come soon.