Loving Your Neighbor

Yesterday I heard someone making fun of my friend.  Joe was making a joke to another kid about "how gay" my friend is.  As soon as I heard this I told Joe, "Don't make fun of (let's call him Bob) Bob!"  Joe shrugged and told me, "Why, he's gay", as if that would justify everything.  He went on about how if someone is gay then they are going to Hell.  He talked about gay people like they were the lowest forms of life in the universe.

I told him that I don't accept homosexuality but I don't hate people who are gay.  He asked me why I shouldn't hate gay people if I don't accept being gay.  I told him that Christ doesn't call me to hate anyone or even to dislike them.

God calls us to love everyone, yes, even gay people (for those of you who haven't taken the hint yet).  When Christians hate unbelievers like this, what do you think the impression of the hated is towards Christianity?  Nowhere in the New Testament did Jesus hate a single person.  Jesus didn't call any of the church leaders to be his disciples, he called tax collectors who cheated people out of their money, he called fishermen who "cursed like sailors".  Jesus was asked by the Pharisees what the greatest commandment is.  He told them in Matthew 22:37-39:

" 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' " (NIV)

Let's think about this for a minute, how do we love our neighbors as ourselves?  How do we even love ourselves?  The Bible doesn't tell us to be full of ourselves and to love every single thing about ourselves.  My worst moments are when I look in the mirror and think, 'You are awesome'.  When I look back on some of the things I have done, I start loathing myself.  So I am allowed to loath some of the things my neighbor does, or as many of you have heard before, hate the sin, not the sinner.  You may ask: how could you hate something a man does and not hate the man?  Well you have been doing this to someone your entire life, yourself.  It doesn't matter how much I hate the sins I commit, I keep loving myself anyway.  The very reason I hate all the sins I commit is because I love myself.  Even so, Jesus doesn't want us to hate other  in the same way we hate things in ourselves, Jesus wants us to be sorry that the man did what he did, and to hope that somehow, someday, he can ask god to be forgiven of his crimes.

Joe went on to say that sin is a disease, and that if we get anywhere near Bob then we will sin.  Well I know that sin is contagious, and the most contagious sin is pride.  Jesus told a parable about a prideful Pharisee and a tax collector.

"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself:  'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or eve like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'

But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."(Luke 18:9-14, NIV)

This parable shows two things:

One: that we aren't any better than anyone else, especially if we think we are.

Two: less is more to God, if I come to him with an arrogant and prideful heart, He won't take me seriously.

We can make fun of unbelievers all we want, but if we do make fun of them and they end up becoming a brother in Christ, they will be higher in the Kingdom of Heaven than you because God has a nice sense of justice.

I would like to quote from a book C.S. Lewis wrote called the Weight Of Glory:

"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about his neighbor.  The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.  It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of these destinations."

It's pretty scary when you think about being partly responsible for the eternity of the people around you.  Every interaction you make with them steers them at some degree towards Heaven or towards Hell.  How do you think you are most likely to steer them towards eternity with God, by hating them; or by loving them?