***disclaimer*** This post, as I wrote, went in a direction I wasn't expecting. I hope that anyone choosing to read this understands these are my opinions, and mine alone. I do not claim to be a Biblical scholar. I do not mean any thoughts as a judgement on anyone. That's not my place, and I don't want it to BE my place. The beginning of this post is about LOVE, and that is the point of all my thoughts - I don't understand everything, I have questions about a lot of things, but the bottom line is that as long as we follow the two greatest commandments Jesus ever gave us, we are doing what is most important in our lives. Now, if I haven't scared you off, please continue...
love love love.
love love love.
when asked what the most important commandment was, of all the commandments, Jesus answered:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:30-31 (NIV)
if Jesus said this, and you believe in Him, why is loving your neighbor so hard to do as a Christian? if you're not a Christian, then i understand - ppl are hard to love! if you don't have Christ to fall back on, of course you're going to have an excuse to be mean and surly and abusive and whatnot. but if you say you follow Christ, if you say you LOVE HIM, if you say you want to do God's work... how can you possibly not LOVE His ppl? how can you not want them to know His love? why do you shout angry things at women walking into planned parenthood? why do you hold signs of protest at a FUNERAL? why do you turn your back on the gay community? how can you have a prison ministry, or a streets ministry, and show love and compassion to murderers and hookers and thieves and liars, and yet turn your back on others?
or, really, turning your back is not the right phrase. turning your back would be almost kind compared to what you have done. pointing fingers at the gay community is not helpful. sharing the LOVE of the Lord, letting that child or adult who is struggling - or who is confident, it really doesn't matter - know that Jesus loves them no matter what... THAT is the witness needed, IMO.
idk what any of that means, i just know it has been on my heart to share it for about a week, but every time i think of it, i've already shut down for the night! i just have such a heart for women who are faced with the choice of abortion - the misinformation they're given that can skew their choice, the approach "pro-lifers" use... it just seems so cruel to me. let me be perfectly clear (i hope) - because i believe that God created us with free will, and because currently abortion is legal in our country, i am pro-choice, but not pro-abortion. i would beg of any woman making such a "choice" to CHOOSE LIFE. it is my belief that the majority of women who choose abortion don't believe they have any other options, and they are told lies about how a fetus is not a baby. it's not actually a life. setting aside Biblical beliefs for a moment, and using only scientific fact, whatever you want to call it - fetus, baby, peanut - it is ALIVE. there are those who understand, or think they do at the time, but can not fully comprehend the toll their sacrifice could take on their lives. instead of abusing these women as they struggle with their choices, we should be helping them feel as confident in choosing life as pro-abortionists make them feel about choosing abortion.
and if we know someone who has made that most difficult of choices, we should support them and love them as sisters in Christ, and not stigmatize them or judge them. they did what they felt they had to, they are not the enemy.
i believe that the Bible mentions homosexuality in a bad light for a reason. i have no idea what that reason is, or why the times it's mentioned are confusing. i have no idea why some churches choose to ignore that portion of Scripture, or how being gay affects someone's relationship with the Lord. i believe that being gay does not exclude you from HAVING a relationship with the Lord. i'm not gay, so i don't have to think about it too hard - i did have to make a decision in my own life about promescuity and how that would affect someone's relationship with the Lord, however. which is not to link being gay with being promiscuous, only to compare something i had to come to terms with in my own life and realtionship with God. (ooh, that makes it sound like i was promiscuous. i was not, but had friends who were and who may have encouraged me to "loosen up," and i had to decide if that was the way i wanted to go. so, i guess the comparison i'm making, and how this all ties together in my head, is one word - choice.)
while i understand that the consensus is being gay is not a choice, just as being straight is not a choice, how one chooses to act upon those things IS. whether you are gay or straight, the Bible directs us to be sexually pure. does that apply to ANYONE anymore? how many ppl - male, female, gay, straight - can say they have only had sex with one person, and that one person being their spouse/SO? our entire culture is about finding "the one" - but trying on all sorts of "almosts" in the process of finding that "one!"
kids are thinking about sex or having sex at younger and younger ages. it's considered a "rite of passage" for boys. maybe now for girls, too, idk. in reading some articles in a recent People about bullying, some of the kids committing suicide were as young as 13! and the reason they were bullied? they were gay, or being called gay. at 13, really? at 13, you don't even know who YOU are yet, how can you make a decision like that? (and by decision i mean acting on feelings for the opposite sex or the same sex.) you're not emotionally ready for a long-term commitment (generally speaking, i'm sure there are exceptions). you're certainly not ready to commit your body to someone else.
and yet our culture continues to send kids mixed messages. our LAWS continue to send kids mixed messages. "you're not old enough to legally make the decision to have sex. but if you illegally make the decision to have sex, and you are female and get pregnant, you are legally old enough to have an abortion and no one is allowed to tell your parents." huh? "when you bully a classmate, well, you're not old enough to really mean any harm, so we're not going to intervene, but if something bad should happen to the child you're bullying, we'll press charges against you because you obviously knew what you were doing." what is wrong with this picture??
and... wow. how did my post about LOVE turn into what's wrong w/ society part 12? lol
i think my point was probably lost in all my rambling, but i'm leaving it out there anyway. to clean it up, if you're still hanging in there and reading til the end, i'll say this - at the end of the day, what I think is right or wrong, good or bad, is between me and the Lord. the same goes for each person who confesses their faith in Him. i am not perfect. it is only through Christ's sacrifice, through His blood, through His GIFT, that i will spend eternity with Him. you are not perfect. it is only through Him that YOU will spend eternity with Him. who you choose to be, the actions you choose to take and what you choose to make of the life He's created, is between you and the Lord.
i can not, and should not, judge you. i can, and do, love you, hopefully as He loves you, as an example of His love. i hope that you love me in the same way. i hope that if you've read this far, and have disagreed with anything (or everything) i've said, that you can still LOVE me because you love Him.
and, if you don't know Him or love Him, ask yourself what you might be missing out on. and remember that He loves YOU no matter what. : )
ttfn.
