Loving thy gay, Muslim, Obama-loving, baby-murdering neighbor

   The commandment Jesus gave to love thy neighbor as thyself never really worked for me. I've never been a big fan of me. If I had to list something I liked about myself, I'd have a hard time coming up with something real. I like my taste in music, but that is not really me. Its something I like. If I were my neighbor, would I have a hard time or an easy time loving me?

   After Jesus was asked "who is my neighbor?" by a religious leader, He replied by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. As anyone who knows their Bible very well knows, the Samaritans and Jews hated each other. They were the original Hatfields and McCoys. There was a lot of bad blood between them. So here you have a Samaritan helping a Jew. Unheard of. I think Jesus intentionally used two people who normally would have nothing to do with each other to get his point home, and to give everyone to ever live the message that we should love everyone. Even those we have reason to not love.

   Muslims scare me. I really mean that. I know not all Muslims are terrorists, but I do believe all Muslims hate non-Muslims, especially Jews and Americans, and even though all of them may not actively seek our destruction, they do want us "heretics" to die. I also firmly believe that they are slowly trying to take over our country, and that Barak Obama is either a Muslim, or is very pro-Muslim is all he does and believes......

   That said, I'd have a really hard time having a Muslim as a neighbor. And yes, I get it that Jesus means more than just the people living in our neighborhood, but I'm going with that right now. I'd be worried they were working on a bomb in their basement. I'd be afraid if I looked at the wife, the husband would murder me in my sleep....... yet that doesn't give me or anyone who serves God an excuse not to love them, reach out to them, be neighborly.

  And there are others. I'd have a hard time living next to a animal rights activist, an abortionist, someone who voted for Obama. (I mean that..... he is no good and is destroying this country, and I'd ticked off at people who got us into this boat!) But does that mean I can shun them, not love them? Absolutely not.

  I was reading a book today that I got to review. It is the second book in The Windy City Neighbors Series by Dave and Neta Jackson. Each book is going to center on a different neighbor in this certain neighborhood. This book centered on a Christian black couple who has custody of the man's thirteen year old grandson, and are dealing with the man's son who just got out of jail. They have just moved into the neighborhood and the wife decides to bake a bunch of cinnamon rolls and take to all of their neighbors and introduce themselves. They get all kinds of reactions. Some welcoming, some not so, some who seem to resent them moving into the older lady's house who had been foreclosed on.

  Then they get to the house two houses north of them. A little boy of about ten answers the door, then calls for his dad. A man comes to the door and they introduce themselves. He says to wait a minute til he gets his husband. Yes, his husband. This gay couple welcomes them to the neighborhood and apologizes for not doing so sooner. The book doesn't do much with the gay couple, other than the point being made that not many people are nice and welcoming to them, and the Christian couple struggling a bit over it. There is a message though in the book that this gay couple deserves to be loved just as much as everyone else in the neighborhood.

  At the end of the book, the Christian couple has asked the elderly lady who had been foreclosed on in the house they now own, to move into the basement apartment. They set up luminaries to light the sidewalk, and ask all of their neighbors, even the gay couple, to help welcome her back.

  I shudder to think how a lot of Christians would treat gay neighbors. Even how some people in my church would treat them. I heard some comments a few years ago when we discussed homosexuality in Sunday School class....... and I pity the gay person who runs across some of the people who were sitting in that class...... but I am confident there are others in my church and other churches that would love them.

  The gay issue is a tough one. There are gay people, the ones I call militant gays, who don't want tolerated, they want accepted. They want it taught in schools that gay is OK, they want kids taught that they should experiment sexually with the same gender. I fear if they keep getting their agenda furthered, the day will come when it will be illegal to say it is wrong. The day could come when our pastors are forced to marry a same-sex couple or face fines and jail. That is why I am against Christians being forced to photograph gay weddings, bake cakes for gay weddings, etc.... for if we continue to cave, we will lose our freedoms to the gay agenda.

  Yet, we have made some sins, including that one, so bad that we are tossing out the sinner with the sin. The same Bible that says homosexuality is a sin, also says sex between an unmarried woman and man is a sin, yet no one has a problem loving those sinners.

  I don't know if Jesus would bake a cake for a gay wedding. He says homosexuality is a sin, so there is no way He would even recognize a marriage between two people of the same gender.

  I think a balance needs to be found. There is such a push on to reason around what the Bible says about everything. There isn't much left in the Bible that some church or Christian hasn't reasoned around. Murder? Yep - that's what abortion is, yet tons of people who call themselves Christians support it and vote for candidates who further its cause. The same with homosexuality. There is such a push on for the church to say its ok. Its not. It is a sin, and people are doing gay people no favor by helping to damn their souls by patting them on the back and telling them the Bible doesn't really mean its a sin........ but that doesn't mean we can shun them and kick them out of the church either.

  I think most Christians would be shocked at how many people in their own churches and families are struggling with same-sex attractions, but are scared to death to seek help. Their own families might shun them and kick them out.

  I'm reminded of a heartbreaking story Christian singer Kirk Talley told on his first recording, a live CD, made after it came out that he was gay. There was a young man who attended a fairly large church where he played a guitar on the worship team. He was struggling with same-sex attractions, and went to his pastor about it. His pastor seemed understanding and I think said he'd pray for him. The next service came. While the young man was on the platform with the worship team, the pastor told of his coming to him about his same-sex attractions - in front of the whole church - then turned to the young man and said something along this line:  "Get out of my church and don't come back. We don't want your kind here"

  Can you imagine? Any person reading that story that has an ounce of compassion should be feeling a sense of outrage, and pitying that poor guy, but yet aren't many Christians doing that from the pew? We may not order someone out of the church, or carry a "God hates fags" sign, but we are so hateful toward gay people and any other sin that we consider "bad", that we are driving the very people from the church who needs the church the most. We pull our righteous robes around us and thank God we never did THOSE sins.

  If Jesus was walking the earth today, He wouldn't be telling gay people they are OK that way, but He'd be hanging out with them, having them over for a meal, loving them. I was recently reading a blog post by a guy who I agree with sometimes, and sometimes not so much. He addressed this very issue and said we have made the gay debate us against them. Its like we have set gay people aside as a whole separate sinful group of people who needs to be dealt with differently and treated differently, but that's not the case. They are what we all have been at one point: sinners. Yes, we need to fight the gay agenda, or our Kindergartners will be taught all about gay sex from a positive viewpoint..... but we still have to love people, no matter what their sin is, no matter how much we hate what they do and stand for.

  Its not easy to love everyone. But God is love, and we are to be like Him, so we are to love. And we can't pick and choose who we love, unfortunately. We have to love everyone: the gay guy, the Muslim, the planned parenthood worker, the Obama voter, Obama........ OK, I need a lot of help with that one.

  How many people are we going to help send to hell because we shunned them for their lifestyle or something else we didn't like about them? Yes, God can send someone else to reach them, and He may, but if we turn someone off to Christianity and Jesus because we had to hate the Muslim or gay man, how can we stand at the judgment knowing that?

  I may never have a gay or Muslim neighbor. I do have a Democrat neighbor, though this past election she got her eyes opened and didn't vote for Obama, but what if I did have gay neighbors, Muslim neighbors, animal rights activists who had a fit when I grilled meat?

 I am including myself in this, but I fear the church and the Christians in the church, are sadly lacking in love for the sinner today. We don't want certain kinds of people in our church, though we may not order them out from the platform, we wouldn't make them feel welcome in the church or neighborhood.

  Just how much like Jesus are we?