Tag: Way of Jesus

Love From The Center Of Who You Are

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. [NIV]
-St. Paul of Tarsus, Letter to the Romans, 12:9-10

Every generation has challenges to face. The daily news keeps reminding us of that. Global and local events also remind us that there is always darkness, there is always evil, there is always sorrow, there will always be hate. The questions is though: when you face challenging situations in your heart, in your home, in your community, in our nation, will you have enough light, enough good, enough joy, enough love to overcome?

Probably not on your own. We need friends to help us make it through. I believe that we especially need the Lord, who faced the darkest hate in our world – and he overcome it with light and love. He can send us friends, he can send us wisdom and strength, he can be with us as we strive together to overcome our hatred.

In our world we aspire to love others, but often succumb to hating others. As we seek to serve and lead in our homes and communities, may we be empowered by the Spirit of the Lord to let go of hating others. May we love from the center of who we are in Christ, to hate what is evil and cling to what is good, to love our enemies and bless those who curse us.

May these quotes on love and hate inspire you to honest reflection, candid confession, and a lighter tomorrow:

Hatred paralyses life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
-Anne Lamott

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
-Jonathan Swift

In time we hate that which we often fear.
-William Shakespeare

Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.
-George Bernard Shaw

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love.
This is how the whole scheme of things works.
All good things are difficult to achieve;
and bad things are very easy to get.
-Rene Descartes

Hate is too great a burden to bear.
It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.
-Coretta Scott King

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.
What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
-Herman Hesse

Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
-Henry Emerson Fosdick

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
-James Baldwin

When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves.
-Chuck Palahniuk

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Why Trying To Be A Good Person Is Bad For You

I’ve always tried to be a good person. I’m a pleaser, so often my attempts to do good are driven by my desire to make others happy. I certainly try to be a good person as a way to love God and love my family and friends.  I like trying to be a good person.

But if I’m honest, trying to be good can sometimes be bad for me and my community. How?

In my effort to be a good person, and to appear as a good person, guess what typically happens? Yes, that’s correct: lots and lots of denial, rationalizing, defensiveness, and well intentioned but maybe naive help.

My desire to be good can undermine my acceptance of the not-good within me or coming from me.

In one of the stories that Mark tells about Jesus, the religious lawyers confronted him about why his disciples ate with unwashed hands. Jesus, it seemed to them, was okay with lawbreaking. He, however, turned their questions around on them, accusing them of hypocrisy.

It’s ironic, since the Pharisees and religious lawyers were so committed to being good people and devout followers of Israel’s God. So how was it that in their attempts to be good they were bad?

In the teachings of Moses God makes it clear that people are to honor their parents, especially in their old age – and this includes caring for them financially and being a blessing to them (instead of being a negligent or abusive curse).

But the Pharisees had found a way to designate their finances and time to God as a way to both look pious and avoid the expense and difficulty of caring for their aging parents. They found a way to avoid keeping  commands of God by coming up with a way to be devoted to God.

In this case, their attempts to be good people was bad for their parents.

Jesus then goes on to make a bigger point about unclean hands and being good people. He was accused of defiling his body by eating with unwashed hands. But Jesus points out that it’s not what goes in that defiles the body, but what comes out. Don’t worry about the food that goes in to the stomach, pay attention to what comes out of your heart.

This is provocative stuff. Jesus describes twelve inter-connected evils that are already in our heart: immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, pride, and folly.

My first instinct, and probably yours too is to scan the list and see which ones apply. As an act of humility we might pick a few we all struggle with. But this is where our addiction to being good corrupts our judgment. Jesus is saying that all of these evil thoughts are in our hearts.

And if we’re always looking for ways we’re not guilty of them, we’ll be blind to the ways we are guilty. And if we’re never convicted, there’s nothing to confess and repent.

Everyone agrees Jesus was a good man. So how was it that Jesus was crucified for being seditious (a law-breaker and a political threat) and for blasphemy (slandering against God). He was put to death by men and women who thought of themselves as good people seeking to be devout followers of God.

The irony? In trying to be good and devout people they killed God.

Hypocrisy is undermined by humility. It takes humility to confess the evil thoughts within our heart. It takes humility to hear from others how we have wronged them, even though we thought we were doing the right thing.

Being good can become a vague assertion that can prevents us from being honest and humble about the bad that is really in us. And that’s bad for us.

Who then can be good? Only God is good. The rest of us, well, maybe we should give up on trying to be good and work to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

This is, ironically, what Jesus strives for us to become and do.

On Doing Good To Everyone – Even Those No Longer With You

If you’ve downloaded the free YouVersion.com Bible app onto your phone, Galatians 6:10 was the verse today, and depending on your settings, the image above would have showed up on your home screen. (If you’ve not downloaded the app, or set it to show you a verse each day, try it – I think you’ll find great value in it).

I appreciated reading the verse this morning, I agreed with it in my head, but then I thought about how tired my heart feels, and got a little anxious as I drove to work about how much good I might need to give out today.

It made me think of what other people are going through that is even more painful and exhausting than my current circumstances. Grief and regret, guilt and shame, disappointments and doubts – they are part of my life, maybe yours, and most everyone else. They can undermine our resolve to do good, sap our energy, distort our vision of the future.

But pain and suffering can also connect us. If we will abide in love.

As you contemplate the grief and regrets in your life, consider these writings on love, on doing good, on abiding and being present – with those still with you in body, and those with you only in memory. They continue to be a source of wisdom and healing for me, may they be good for your soul too:

The one who truly loves never falls away from love.

He can never reach the breaking point. Yet, is it always possible to prevent a break in a relationship between two persons, especially when the other has given up? One would certainly not think so. Is not one of the two enough to break the relationship?

In a certain sense it is so. But if the one who loves is determined to not fall away from love, she can prevent the break, she can perform this miracle; for if she perseveres, a total break can never really come to be.

By abiding, the one who loves transcends the power of the past. We transform the break into a possible new relationship, a future possibility.

The one who loves that abides belongs to the future, to the eternal. From the angle of the future, the break is not really a break, but rather a possibility. But the powers of the eternal are needed for this. The one who loves must abide in love, otherwise the heartache of the past still has the power to keep alive the break.

The whole thing depends upon how the relationship is regarded, and the one who loves- she abides.

Can anyone determine how long a silence must be in order to say, “Now there is no more conversation”?

Put the past out of the way; drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love. Then the end is the beginning and there is no break!

But the one who loves abides. “I will abide,” he says. “Therefore we are still on the path of life together.” And is this not so?

What marvelous strength love has! The most powerful word that has ever been said, God’s creative word, is: “Be.” But the most powerful word any human being has ever said is, “I abide.”

Reconciled to himself and to his conscience, the one who loves goes without defense into the most dangerous battle. She only says: “I abide.” But she will conquer, conquer by her abiding.

There is no misunderstanding that cannot be conquered by our abiding, no hate that can ultimately hold up to our abiding – in eternity if not sooner. If time cannot, at least the eternal shall wrench away the other’s hate.

Yes, the eternal will open our eyes for love. In this way love never fails – it abides.

May these curing words of Kierkegaard impart a fresh perspective on the breaches of love in your life.

As you grieve and mourn the endings in your life, may you learn to abide in love.

We may not get to choose our death day, but we do get to choose to do good to everyone with all of the days we have left.