As a Christian, I operate under 2 foundational rules:

Love God
Love your neighbor

In other words:

Love a perfect being.
Love a lot of imperfect people.

Quite a contrast. It is also a bit ironic……..that because I love a perfect God, I am required to love a bunch of imperfect humans. But, hey, rules is rules……..and I don’t get to make them up.

BTW…….neither do you.

Loving God is pretty straightforward. Once you accept his existence, it is hard not to love and honor the guy who created you………your family……..and everything else.

Loving your neighbor……now that is a whole different kettle of fish. I don’t know about the people around you; but, the people around me are imperfect……… sometimes spectacularly so. Sometimes they mistreat me, sometimes they attack me. As a Christian and a conservative, it is hard to look through my Facebook timeline without being called, indirectly, a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe, and more. And that is from my friends!

When people treat you well, they are easy to love.

But what about when they treat you badly?

How do you love Antifa? How do you love the anarchists who are burning our cities? How do you love Planned Parenthood? How do you love the author who calls you a racist……because you are white? (Hard to miss the irony there.)

The first step is to concede that you too………are imperfect. We all like to believe that we are fundamentally good. We call up a picture of an angry guy in a hoodie smashing windows and we smuggly say to ourselves, “I’m better than him”. Fact is……you probably are, at least today. But on the cosmic scale of “goodness”…….on God’s scale of “goodness”……..there is really not much difference between the two of you. From God’s perspective…….. you, me, and the guy in the hoodie are all neck deep in the muck.

The second step follows closely. Because I too am imperfect, the guy in the hoodie and I are in about the same boat…….in the eyes of God. And isn’t that the perspective that really counts…… considering the eternal implications?

Finally, consider that God loves you…….and me…….and the guy in the hoodie. He loves us even though we are imperfect. He loves us even though we do things that offend him……things that hurt him……every single day.

It would be a massive act of hypocrisy for me to mistreat God and then accept his love while at the same time withholding my love from somebody who has mistreated me.

So, I have to find a way to love the guy who spit in my face. I have to find a way to love Planned Parenthood, I have to find a way to love the guy from Antifa……because God loves me…….in spite of my imperfections.

And that………..is not going to be easy.

I’m a woodworker. My project today is a very complicated table. It is at the very limits of my skill set…….and I have been stalling……..because I’m afraid I’ll mess up. But, it’s been paid for and I have a deadline. So I will start by sawing the boards that I will need to the exact size required. I can do that……. today.

As far as loving the guy in the hoodie is concerned, I can start by realizing that he and I have some things……..possibly some imperfections……in common. He and I are brothers……..I can do that……….today. Tomorrow, maybe I can try to understand him……….even if we disagree.

Lord, please give peace………….to the guy in the hoodie.

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Jesus, NIV

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,  bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also.”

Jesus, NIV

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.

Jesus, NIV

I watch what is going on in our cities.

Bad cops killing helpless black men.
Antifa terrorists and anarchists financed by Soros, destroying our cities.
A dishonest news media (yes……all of them……..even your favorite) selling a political agenda………. selling hate.

It is scary……but mostly I find it profoundly saddening. How did we get here? And……..more importantly……..how do we get out? How do we save our society? How do we heal our critically ill culture?

How we got here is very complicated. I don’t want to oversimplify; but, I think that a huge part of the problem is that we have listened to media sources that have polarized us. They have been telling us that the other guy…….the guy with other ideas is evil. We listen, because the same media source that tells us that the other guy is evil……….is also telling us that we are noble. Since we are noble and the other guy is evil, anything that we do…….anything that we say……any hate filled post that we share……..is justified.

We have reached the point where we honestly believe that using hate to fight hate is noble.

It is not. This bears repeating.

USING HATE TO FIGHT HATE IS NOT NOBLE.

It just makes you one more “hater”.

I have always believed that there is a core segment of the American people who are good, wise people. These are the people who made us a great nation……..a source of good in the world. I fear that this segment is smaller than it was when I was young. But, I also believe that it is still big enough. I am not talking about the cop with his knee on a man’s neck. I am not talking about the professional rioter burning a small business. I am not talking about the “talking heads” pandering hate to the left and to the right. I am talking about the 67 year old lady taking care of her granddaughter….the salvation army bell ringer……the church that takes food to a local trailer park.

You will not see these people on the evening news.

So how do we heal out culture? We do it by growing the core of good wise Americans. The key to doing this is the heart of the New Testament. Love your neighbor. When we do this we show our neighbor his value…….and our own. Possibly even more importantly, we show the bystanders around us the heart of God. We will not make the 6 o’clock news. We will not silence the “talking heads”. But, we can move the needle just a little bit at a time……with love. It will take a lot of us. It will take thousands of us loving our neighbor to undo the damage that one member of antifa can do in an evening. The good news? There are millions of us!

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 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.”

Jesus, NIV

OK…….I know that sounds crazy.

But, if you consider how we make decisions, the fact is that we act like we are…….. smarter than God that is. Some of us reject God altogether. This, by definition, means that we are smarter. But, even among believers, Christians, a great many of us give our choices, our decisions, our appetites priority over the teachings of God. When we do that, we are saying, in effect, that we know better than God. We pick through the Bible. We follow the teachings that we like………that don’t restrict our appetites. We reject any teaching that we disagree with. We reject any teaching that interferes with our appetites. Why?…… because we think that we are smarter than God.

Premarital sex is an example:

God teaches us that sex is for husbands and wives…… that sex before or outside of marriage between a man and a woman is wrong. Yet, among young people, premarital sex is the norm. Even among older people, extramarital sex is not uncommon. The result is sexually transmitted disease, unwanted pregnancy, abortion, divorce and more. The evidence is pretty clear………premarital sex and extramarital sex don’t work. They may be fun over the short term……..but in the long run, when I Iook back over 60 years, they are not good for us…… as individuals and as a society. The fact that we accept extramarital sex as normal behavior indicates that we rate our risk/reward assessment above God’s. In word, we are saying that we are smarter than God.

There are many more examples:

Should we copy somebody else’s work at school?
God says no……..we say “I need good grades…….everybody else is doing it and I have to keep up”.

Should we fudge on our tax return?
God says no….we say “the chance of an audit is small”.

Should we use the copier at work for personal use?
God says no…….we say “it’s only a few cents”

Should we have an abortion?
God says no…….we say “but this child will interfere with my plans”

Should we disobey our parents?
God says no……we say “they are old and narrow minded”

Should we work on Sunday?
God says no……. we say “but I need to catch up”

In the Bible, God gives us lot of good advice and some rules. This advice isn’t there to ruin all of our fun…… it’s there for our protection. It is there to lead us to long term joy.
But, we often ignore this advice……. Why? It’s really pretty simple…….we believe that we have a better plan……. even though the evidence around us indicates otherwise.

In a word…….by our behavior, we are saying that we are smarter than God…………….and we do this every day.

There is only one problem.

We aren’t smarter than God………and we suffer because our hubris leads us into bad choices.

We aren’t smarter than God………our choices may lead us to short term pleasure, but God has a better idea…….an idea that leads us to long term joy.

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”

Solomon, NIV

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

Solomon, NIV

You probably suspected……… I’m out on a limb here.

The Bible is loaded with “rules”. They must be there for a reason. On first glance you might think that they tell us what God wants from us. Do this……. Don’t do that. They dictate goals for our behavior. We often get bogged down in these rules. In the church, we call this legalism. Christians are often criticized because of the rules we follow. Christians often beat others up over the rules. A lot of Christians are miserable because of their focus on the rules. And here is the bad news……..they make the people around them miserable too.

Lesson 1: obedience to the rules is not what God wants.

The rules are just the first complicated layer of an onion that, fortunately, gets simpler the more of it that we peel away.
Imagine a parent whose child is going away. The parent says to the child……in so many words…….. come, wrap your arms around me, and give me a long hard squeeze. This could even be an expectation…….a rule. But a squeeze is not what the parent wants. A hug? No, a hug is not what the parent wants.
What the parent wants is to tell the child that the child is loved……..and to be told that the love is returned. What the parent wants is relationship…….and not just any relationship……. the parent wants love……both given and received.

Parents have lots of daily rules. Brush your teeth, don’t cross the street, wash your hands. Same story here, the parent wants the child to be safe. But even that isn’t the final goal. The parent wants to spare the child pain.

Parents have lots of rules about dealing with others. Don’t cut in line, say please and thank you, don’t hit your sister. The goal of these rules is to create the habit of loving the people around you.

And finally………..what may be the deepest layer of the onion. God created you. He wired you up with a set of needs…….and these needs are universal. These universal needs are God’s fingerprint. They create a hunger in you that guides you to the place you need to be. By satisfying these needs, you will find happiness.

And there it is………God wants you to be happy. The rules, paradoxically, are not there to ruin your fun. They are the roadmap to your optimal destination. We should follow the rules, because they are useful. But, we need to keep our focus on our final goal, not on the rules that guide us there.

So……..what does God want?

Relationship, built on love……between you and him.

Relationship, built on love……between you and your fellow man.

Your happiness.

And that……….in my never humble opinion……..is what God wants.

If you have been sold some other brand of Christianity…….something full of rules, punishment, and guilt….. something just plain weird……..then you have been had.

love is the fulfillment of the law

Paul, NIV

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Jeremiah, NIV

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus, NIV