Love the Lord Your God

So...there's this vibe emerging from within and from outside of the Church that has everyone "all anti-church and religious forms and tradition and stuff." Out of this is born the following "theology:"

Loving God and loving people are on an equal plane. That is, if you love God, you must love people. You can't love people without loving God and you can't love God without loving people.

The problem such an understanding of Matthew 22 runs into is the idea of which is penultimate and which is truly ultimate. For instance, the purpose of man is what? Answer: To love and glorify God and enjoy Him forever. How do we go about this? How do we love Him, glorify Him, and enjoy Him forever? Well one way (and a necessary way) is to love people. But - and it's a really huge and important but - what's our purpose again? Therefore, the way we go about living out our purpose, the purpose for which God created us, is penultimate. How about this....the end is superior to the means....does that strike your heart-strings harmoniously?

Think about it...why do we eat? To remain healthy and not starve. What's most important, your health or the act of eating? The means complement the end, but they are subservient to it. Why do we love people, because it's a way in which we go about loving God...we also love God by spending alone time with Him, when no one else is around - communicating with Him...prayer. These are acts of worship through which we can demonstrate our love for God. They aren't inauthentic; they are true acts of love. If this is to be the case, however, they must be focused on Jesus Christ. If we ever take our eyes off of Him we will be incapable of loving as we ought, and therefore not fulfilling our purpose, and actually demonstrating one's lacking love. If God is love and true love can only flow from God's love for us, then loving others is only secondary to loving God.

Now, at this point, some might argue - using my logic - that if God's love overflows into us so that we might love others by His love, God's love is actually the means and loving others is the end. This, however, is bad theology because it places a primary importance upon loving others, when the first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your mind, all of your heart, and all of your strength. The second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. But if you truly love your neighbor, your focus is on God so that you can love them in the first place.

I hope this clears up the fog created because of this whirlwind of anti-church rebellion. It's sad that because of such rebellion in the world, the Church has, in many ways, acquiesed to the trends and pastors of all sorts are "condoning" behavior that would have never been able to "fly" back in the day: back in the day when hospitality was a given, back in the day when the United States was actually safe, back in the day when those who were saved were taught to love their neighbor as theirself (because now everyone has an urge to love others across the ocean who they're unable to meet and of which they cannot yet meet the needs.

Now, so that my post is not just a similar rant against the Church, I want to provide some solutions, because the Church succeeds in so many awesome ways, and I'm definitely for myself, and since I am part of the Church and a house divided cannot stand - I am for the Church. What I'm hoping to address through this post is clear up the - what I consider - problematic tendency of our Body to shift in the waywardness of the world rather than stand in the adamancy and strong tower of Christ and His Word. Like the Laodicean Church in Revelation 3 we need to let Christ back into the Church. We need to bring back the message of what He actually did and said. We need to quit shifting from love to truth to love to truth where we end up dizzy, and instead we could combine the two (as they should be and are in their original state...in Christ).

How do we combine truth and love?

1. We have to know what He said - Read the Scriptures often.
2. We have to have the right interpretation of what He said (context is a must here), and so be led by the Spirit in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding to adhere to Scripture scripturally. This also means unifying with other strong believers in understanding...when we're unified with each other in Him, He is with us.
3. As Christ pursues the Church with the Father's love, we should pursue loving others with Christ's love.


How do we go about loving others?

1. Ask God - pray - to show you others in need. Have Him illumine those people who you are meant to love on immediately. Remember there are people in this world who are only able to be loved on by you. You are God's workmanship in Christ Jesus to do the work for which He created you. If you aren't given a passion for people in other countries or on other continents, don't be worried that God didn't have a plan for creating you. Those people might not have a passion for their neighbor in the States (who don't know Christ just as equally as those deep jungle tribes), but you might. In that case, ask God to help you recognize those who are in need of His love, and in what way you are to share His love with them.

2. Be obedient to the calling. C'mon man, quit using all this Church language. Speak English...what's this mean, "obey the calling." It means that if you see someone in need, help them out. If you see someone and you want to give them a hug, then do it, give them a hug (ask them if you don't know them, otherwise it might be awkward and means for a lawsuit).



I'm tired of typing for a bit....I'll write more later (maybe about this, maybe not)

God bless,
DMS