To Really Love
Cross Cultural Connection’s foundation is that we love people because God loves us, and chose to love us before we were lovable, when we needed His Grace and were walking in sin and rebellion.
When one loves, one doesn’t live casting about with an evil eye, seeking whom one will not love. Nor does one go around measuring, evaluating, judging, deciding who is more or less worthy of one’s love. Quite the contrary. It’s like swimming. Once one has been touched by the love of Father God, made available to us through the sacrifice which Jesus made on the cross for our sins, one is also filled with the Holy Spirit and empowered to love. That love is buoyant.
Yes, when I was very little, and learning to swim, I struggled to let go and float. But once I trusted the science of floating, I didn’t go into water trying to find it again. It was always there, waiting. God’s love is like that too. Once we lock in and grasp that we are His forever, and He is fully available, ever loving, ever ready to forgive when we are repentant, and ever longing to pour in and through us to bring the kingdom of God on earth through love to others, we don’t go around measuring love. We simply love.
And with love comes a sense of justice. But this is where it gets complicated to those who don’t understand. Justice is like a heart throb, a pulse, an urge. It wells up within one, longing to release God’s love into yet another corner of the chaos and confusion of the mess on earth. But it isn’t blind. It is wise. It is self-sacrificing, but also evaluates. It sets its self by the compass of the Word of God, the very Logos, the God-breathed Words that Jesus embodied. It loves. It loves wisely. It loves where there is the least love being given. It loves where others don’t dare to go. And it loves the most vulnerable especially.
In this sense, it evaluates, it measures, and it applies boundaries. But here it often encounters and clashes with a different kind of measuring rod. It measures with the reality that our Incredibly Loving Creator God poured out His Own Precious Blood from before the creation, intentionally available, knowing that we would need Him. His Love is endless and measureless. It is always available, never limited, inextinguishable, passionate, overflowing. His love is indescribable until one has stepped into His Presence, which is a simple step, but a step which takes every fiber of our personal free choice, which He died to give us. If we cross over into His Presence, we acknowledge that we Need Him. We confess that we are sinners. Thereby we also confess that His judgement of what sin is is accurate, and that the chaotic babel which seeks to make wrong admirable and sin tolerable is not our guideline. We confess that we Need Him, and can not, on our own, justify, rectify, correct, remove, or heal ourselves. We Need Him both temporally and eternally. And in that crossing over, and accessing His Presence and Fullness we leave behind the measuring that the world metes out. The boundary that remains is that we are with Him, and in Him, and that everything which has not yet crossed over and come in is outside. With Him we passionately long for all that is outside to come in, but the boundary of “free choice” remains.
This “free choice” is a gift God gave us from the beginning of creation. He did not create puppets or robots. He doesn’t have a button He pushes and we do His bidding. No, we are fully free to choose to follow Him, and acknowledge Him … or not.
If we chose the “not” we remain naturally limited by default. Humans have the strength of our flesh, and, if we are creative, the strength of our community, our nation, our race, or our goals. Many go far in this strength, but because flesh has its limitations, these goals are always undermined by the flesh. As humans we have natural longing for God, and spirituality, which satan is glad to fill. As such, humans becoming unwitting vessels for spirits of comparison, envy, judgement, hatred, malice, selfish ambition, and a poverty spirit which believes that there is not enough, and creates means to restrict access to others, so that “quality” of life may be extended to themselves.
As such there are mantras about the myth of over population, justifications for abortion, eugenics, euthanasia, and almost nothing is done to stop the forward march of wars that commit genocide. These are all draconian exhibits of selfishness. But the potentially more disturbing element comes from those who dabble in self-righteousness.
Under this umbrella humans fall for the Hegelian principle, willingly subjecting themselves to take a stand on one of two sides of a thesis or anti-thesis, unwittingly willing puppets in a scheme to get people to attack each other where no “sides” ever needed to have been taken in the first place.
One example of this I hear a lot is the attack on the Pro Life Movement. People are snubbed for taking the “easy way” to advocate for a voiceless people who make no demands on them. Automatically this places the Pro-Lifers on one side and the Kind and Compassionate on the other. These Kind Ones supposedly advocate for all the “others” in their own words … “the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor.”
The vitriol becomes spiteful, lashing out that the unborn don’t question you for being "politically incorrect and patriarchal”, they shame people for caring for the unborn at the expense of widows, orphans, and refugees. They label those who care for the unborn saying that they are hypocrites for wanting to distance themselves from “racial, cultural, and religious baggage” and being able to “feel good about themselves without any work.” In this way they can blindly “avoid making reparations to anyone or apologizing for existing social structures.” As a final jab the unborn are “the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.”
With all grace and forgiveness extended to someone blind enough to accuse the Brethren in this manner, the reality is that he has clearly absorbed a mindset which blocks him from grasping how gracious, loving and all encompassing God is. Infantile in perspective, he assumes that every person humbly opening their homes to foster children who are born of mothers who carried to term; every grandparent kneeling on crippled knees outside of Planned Parenthood, praying for mercy; every volunteer rocking addicted babies in hospital; every person who happens to be white but is advocating for black babies to not be killed … every one of them is a belligerent Pro-lifer and therefore to be condemned, lumped into a patriarchal set of bigots. The only thing that is sadder than this evaluation is the reality that people who once said they loved Jesus actually supportively shared this quote from Dave Barnhart on Facebook.
As Flannery O’Conner said, “In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness. And tenderness leads to the gas chambers.” Without Christ we become merely sentimental, and can not, through our own human strength, no matter how focused, restrain the darker forces which humans subject themselves to if they refuse to let Jesus in.
Jesus has entered the Holy of Holies. Once one has crossed over into that Space in Heaven, and worshipped in the Heavenlies, this super earthly spite becomes a mere arrow of the enemy, which one deflects with the Armor of God. But it grieves my heart to hear it justified by people who are being used as puppets to propel Hegelian antagonism.
Here is the thing.
We are pro-life not only because every person deserves to live, but also pro-life in using our lives, our homes, our worship, and attitudes to love. If the Lord chooses to call someone in my church to pour their love into those in prison, I support them. If I pour my energy into supporting refugees to be able to rebuild their nations and go home, my brethren support me. When one of us adopts, the others help. When we work together to prepare food at the homeless shelter, reach out at the local strip club, or advocate for changes in the law to love better, we are all operating from God’s love. But if I do those same actions from human kindness and compassion, inevitably something wilts, a bitterness is born, an argument is evoked, and spite ensues. It’s inevitable. We can not truly love, or comprehend love, with out God indwelling. And those of us who have God indwelling live in awe that this is our reality, and pass no judgments on those who don’t. We simply seek to love them, and often turn the other cheek and deflect their arrows in our daily lives.
I am also only pro-life because Science proves that life in the womb is life. Being what is termed pro-choice is inconsistent with sensibilities, law, and order. We become schizophrenic when we say otherwise. Gladly do we preserve the lives of the unborn turtles, eagles and wolves, but daily we sacrifice over 2,000 babies at Planned Parenthoods death machines. We have laws that protect nests, eggs and habitats of endangered animals, but refuse to grant this right to humans with no voice. A woman can be prosecuted for endangering the baby in her womb with the chemicals of drugs and alcohol, but she can kill it with the chemical Mifeprex abortion pills. The father of a fetus has no right to protect the unborn child, but once he or she is born, he must pay child support. If a mother and the child in her womb are both murdered, it is called a “double homicide”, but if she kills the child it is called a “choice”. Killing a child in the womb is called “health care”, but after the baby is born it is called “infanticide”. A Premee born at 21 weeks is protected in the NICU, but an infant at 21 weeks in the womb is open game for abortion. Science proves that a fetus has human life, but we kill babies daily, pretending it is not murder. If we claim that the Declaration of Independence says that all people are created with equal rights, we are scizophrenic to suppose that humans in the womb are excluded from the inalienable rights we pledge to give them. The 14th Ammendment underlines this, giving everyone the right to experience the protection of life, liberty and property, without discrimination of race, age, or social status. https://www.facebook.com/liveactionnewsonline/videos/2808031279472977/
But I am not only pro-life because of this. I am also pro-life because every nation which has ever murdered its babies has collapsed. Of all the sins any nation can commit, this is the worst. To love someone in prison is an act of grace. They sinned, they are being punished, we visit them, and help them. To love refugees is an act of mercy. They suffered at the cruel hands of an enemy. They are victims, we help, they are empowered. But to be a voice for the voiceless being slaughtered in the womb is the MOST IMPORTANT STANCE ANY CHRISTIAN CAN TAKE ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET … if they value their nation, the future of their children, and the potential for Revival and Shalom on earth.
And so I love. I love because He Is the Great I Am. He is both the Lion and the Lamb, the One who judges and the One who offers to pay the debt of sin we owe, because He loves us so much, He wants to be the bridge of love to allow us to become all we were created to be, free from the confines of mere flesh.
And I forgive those who spew lies. Their mantras are not credible, but the chaos is loud enough they sometimes seem believable. So I will also speak out the truth so that others will not get caught in the chaos. I will not be silent when humans are dehumanized to justify the lie that quality of life is limited to a select group. Abortion will not eliminate poverty, disease, suffering … it could indeed bring it on, because the nation who’s God is The Lord is the only nation which will thrive.
Amen.