"...by our Love."

Last night Lindsey and I were hanging out at a coffee shop playing Set and overheard the guy behind us telling this girl about how God is "bullshit" and how much he hated it when his parents made him read the bible as a kid. It was interesting to say the least.

We went for a walk after Lindsey finished thoroughly dismantling me at the game and we thought and talked about what we had heard him saying. The thing that stood out to me was his tone of voice. He was so angry. I don't think people get that angry without good reason. He hadn't received love. He'd been told "read this, this is what we do" without any show of love. Authority was abused. Somewhere along the way we forgot that leadership and servanthood are the same thing, now leadership means power, and power is rarely a good thing.

I didn't think about any absolute reason why God exists or why Jesus was born on December 25th. I kept thinking about Jesus. I kept thinking about how good he is. I kept thinking about the woman at the well and loving your enemies. This guy we'd overheard hadn't seen that stuff.

Church can be a horrible thing.

The point is that it does a limited amount of good to debate and try to persuade people that God is real and that he loves us. I believe that this is generally a waste of time. If people want to know about what I believe or why I do or don't do things a certain way, they'll ask. The key is to do it all in love. It's easy to see what sucks about people. Pick up any newspaper and very quickly you'll find examples of human idiocy and reason to not give people the benefit of the doubt (benefit of the fact may be more accurate). As a Christian, I'm called to love my enemies (Luke 6:27-28), resolve conflict (Matthew 5:9), and be merciful (Matthew 5:7). Jesus didn't say "when convenient..." He said, "you're my friends if you obey my commands" (John 15:14).

His grace comes into play when he loves us despite how lousy we are at obeying his commands. However, we are still called to obey his commands, not argue with non-Christians about the validity of the bible. God loves everybody and we're called to love our neighbors as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39).

I'm pretty sure that when we start doing this we'll end up talking a lot less.