They will know we are Christians by our love

One of my most profound contacts with Jesus, in terms of his impact on my life, was when I was 7 and visiting my dad's Jesus People community. I remember them singing praise songs all the time: on the bus as we were traveling, at every meal, at thier coffee house, and I just remember feeling so much love, like I'd never felt before. Consequently, I wanted to be like them and craved to know Jesus the way they did, and ended up having a born again experience at a Billy Graham crusade where we were passing out Jesus People newspapers we had printed. Now, I had gone to church before all of this, and went after, but I was never impacted by anything that I was taught from the pulpit the way I was by the love from this community and the way it impacted my relationship with Jesus.
Unfortunately, the Church's reputation in the world is not one of being filled with exceptionally loving people, but one of exceptionally judgemental people. This is not to say that there aren't loving people in the church. Most churches I have attended are more loving than any other kind of institution, but too often the only things that we communicate to the unchurched is that they are behaving badly. We make stances on gay rights, abortion, women's rights, the right to bear arms, stem cell research. The wedge issues as they are called. However, we do so at a cost, and that cost is the reputation of being stronger in love than we are in the law. This last election showed this quite markedly. In thier desire to legislate morality, the evangelical right rallied behind a lady who they gleefully described as the "Baraccuda". She didn't have the reputation of being a woman of exceptional love, care, peace, joy, but rather one that could attack and destroy her opponent.
It seems that Christians have lost faith in the power of God's love. This Sunday at church, I had a wonderful time experiencing God's love through songs, prayer, praise, and connecting with others, and from that I released a number of sinful behaviors to God. When I do connect with God, I don't want to sin. Now that doesn't mean I don't still struggle, but for an hour at least, I got some movement in the right direction. In human relations, we have to offer an alternative, if we hope to erradicate another less healthy behavior. God's love is an alternative to all sin. If we want to change the world, it comes from loving it, not criticizing it. If people know that I care about them more than I care about correcting them, then they will listen, otherwise I am just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal to them. With my wife, she doesn't want me to make her perfect or without sin, she wants me to love her, and when she knows that, she is more likely to change in ways that are pleasing to me. In relationships, we need 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative. If we, as Christians, want to truely impact others, we must love them at least 5 times as much as we judge them.



What would be our impact on our world if we erred on the side of love, rather than erring on the side of truth?