Before you read this, I want you to listen to the song "Where Were You?" by country artist Alan Jackson. Written in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, Jackson asks us to think back to how we reacted during such tragedy. In light of what has been happening in France and Turkey, I ask that we listen to that song in support of our French and Turkish brothers and sisters. I also want to focus in on the chorus. Jackson proudly sings, "I know Jesus, and I talk to God. I remember this from when I was young: Faith, hope and love are some good things he gave us, but the greatest is love."
We, as Christians today, are immensely lacking in love. We need to take a look at love and reevaluate our lives to see how we can truly love others, just as Jesus loves us. Let's start with the big picture: What is love? According to 1 John 4:8, "God is love." Well great, but who is God? God is the creator and divine ruler of all of existence. Nothing happens without his knowledge. God is one union, one trinity, of three equal parts — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God the Son is Jesus, and the reason I'm spelling all of this out piece by piece is because it is crucial to establish these fundamental truths about Christianity to even start to move forward.
After creating the world and the plants and animals that populate it, God the Trinity called forth, saying, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness," all three parts of God were involved in the formation of man. We all know how the rest of the story goes. That first man was Adam, his wife Eve, and they sinned, becoming banished from Eden and forced to live in this non-perfect, broken world that would eventually fill with hatred and violence. Then Jesus, God the Son, came from heaven unto Earth so that he would sacrifice himself as the perfect lamb, the final sacrifice that could atone for all sins should one choose to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. This action fits in perfectly with that scripture from 1 John, because Jesus himself said in John 15:13, "There is no greater love than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends." Jesus did exactly that, laying down his love for everyone. He performed the greatest act of love, fulfilling the notion that God is love.
Therefore, we know that God is love, and love is sacrificial. Love is more than that, though. Love guides and mentors. It teaches and disciplines. However, love is not overtly permissive, while at the same time is not crass or rude. It's this distinction that radically affects the way Christians interact with the world.
Christians, it seems, have been largely divided in this nation in regards to how we act toward non-Christians. On one spectrum, you have Christians condemning the world and everything in it, giving non-Christians the cold shoulder and a flimsy "good luck" for Armageddon. These Christians can be rude and crass because they see people doing things the wrong way and being sinful. The problem with this Christian is that he allows his pride and anger to cloud his judgement and harden his heart. Jesus addressed this sinner in the parable of the debtors, in which the Master (God) forgave his servant (the angry Christian) of his debt, but that servant did not forgive his servant (any non-Christian) of his debt. When the Master found that his servant did not forgive the servant underneath, he imprisoned the angry Christian servant. These Christians are hard of heart and drive away the hurt and broken with harsh words.
The other kind of popular Christian is the all-encompassing Christian. This Christian sees his friends and families follow unsound doctrine, but he clings to Matthew 7:1 and 7:3, in which Jesus said, "Do not judge, or you too will be judged...why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own?" They use these verses and adopt a "live and let live" mentality all in the name of living in peace and in love. This is exactly the point I want to get at and address even more so than the angry Christian. The angry Christian is the easy one to spot out and correct in the manner in which he lives because it's very obvious that he's going a violent route that Jesus never allowed. When Peter cut off a guard's ear, Jesus rebuked his disciple and healed the guard. But, the permissive Christian has a much different mindset and can be harder to correct because his ideology is spreading like wildfire in contemporary America.
The permissive Christian misunderstands the point of Matthew 7:1-3 because he reads it as Jesus outlawing any corrective measures. Jesus does quite the opposite, however, when he gives the Great Commission. He tells Christians to go out and make disciples of all nations, teaching them in the Word. For a teacher to properly teach, he must correct a student's negative actions, be it educational or behavioral. If a student is in the wrong, a teacher instructs him in order to be right in the future. If a Christian witnesses a fellow believer acting in a sinful manner and calls his brother out on it, the Christian isn't passing judgement on his brother's morality or salvation, he's merely holding his brother accountable to the commandments of the Lord.
Furthermore, true love is not permissive. If a child breaks his parents' rules, do the parents not discipline the child? Be it spanking, a time out, or revoking of privileges, the parent takes corrective action to ensure a child lives a better future that honors God. The child may feel hurt or cheated in the moment, but the discipline was administered because the parents loved their child too much to let him live in a negative way. In the same manner, Christians need to hold each other accountable for our actions and instruct the world in how to come to Christ and live in a God-honoring manner.
What does this have to do with France and Turkey? Everything. We live in a world that is broken and hurting, and we cannot be the angry Christian that turns our backs on non-believers when they need our help. On the other side of the coin, we cannot be the permissive Christian that stands by the side under a false banner of "love, not judgement" while these countries are being terrorized. We were given a suit of armor by God for a reason, and we need to properly utilize it to go to battle against the enemy and instruct and offer aid to our fellow man in true love. We're in a spiritual warfare, and we must take a stand underneath one unified banner and set out to live the life Jesus Christ died for us to live. We need to go out and love.
