I was driving this morning and saw a custom florida license plate that got my attention. It said “Protect Wild Dolphins”…
When I saw this I immediately had several thoughts. As a scuba diver, I love the water! But, I have to admit that I didn’t even know that the wild dolphins needed protecting… that is an issue that has simply never been on my radar…but the people from florida who it obviously directly affected were so passionate about it that they were willing to pay extra money to have a license plate made that reflected their conviction…
Then I began to process- Everybody has their passions and convictions… Save the Dolphins, Spay your cats, Stop Childhood Obesity, Vote for this Candidate…The issues are as diverse as the people who embrace them… but where I have found myself frustrated with others convictions is when their passion becomes an overzealous pressure for me to think just like them. Typically, when that happens, they lose their ability to speak into my life…
This thought process took a natural turn into an area i’m most familiar with as I considered the fingerpointing christianity enforcers in our world, I asked myself “why the lack of love and blatant confrontation…”
I rationalized that the primary reason that someone could misrepresent a gospel completely founded on love and would be angry or offended by people who didn’t think like them would likely be if their entire system of beliefs was rooted in pride and “being right”… “But Aaron, it’s a righteous anger”…I’ll give that a VERY loose “maybe”…but, I don’t buy it – I think it’s better said, a “self righteous anger…”
Even Jesus’s disciples who walked daily with him and learned directly from him struggled with conveying his heart of love vs humanistic pride filled retaliation…We see an example in scripture when Jesus left a town that didn’t accept him, one of his disciples asked him if they should curse the town… Jesus response corrected this attitude and basically told him, You don’t know what spirit you are of with that attitude…
Today, I’m choosing to keep the main thing the main thing…It is because God LOVED the world and everyone in it that he gave us Jesus…If God is love and HE allows people the freedom to choose or not choose Him and still loves them in spite of their choices… How much more should I?
We have no right to be angry when people disagree with us… in fact, if we were operating in the love that Christ exampled, our response should be a loving compassion for people failing to perceive the importance of the one thing that we know would liberate them…
Jesus disciples needed to be reminded of this…and I think this is something that merits consideration for us today… If God is Love, remember that fact as we convey who He is to others within our sphere of influence today…
Aaron, I love this….I truly believe also the ‘love walk’ needs more light shed on it….thank you for doing that!!