Saturday, October 26, 2013

They Will Know We Are Christians By Our...Hate



The other night I was out having dinner with my little brother and my fiancée. (We are all gay and all Christian and actually at this point I don’t even want to identify as a Christian - so I will say for clarification - believers and followers of Christ.) Toward the end of dinner we were scrolling through Facebook and I read a post stating that the Girl Scouts accept trans girls. I made a comment about how I wished the Boy Scouts were more accepting and is made me sad that they were haters. As we were walking out, my fiancée overheard a man at the table behind us say, “It’s because we are Christians and we HATE you,” which was somehow in reference to my Boy Scouts comment. She did not tell us what she had heard until we were already outside and that was probably a good thing because both my brother and I were livid. The ignorance of that statement is beyond words. Christian literally means Christ-like and Christ never hated anyone, not even his enemies. He didn’t hate his fellow Jews or the Romans who nailed him to the cross. He didn’t hate the “sinners” that he spent every waking moment with…the thieves, sluts, liars, prostitutes, tax collectors, betrayers. Nowhere in the record of Christ’s 33 years does it ever mention Christ having anything but love and compassion for every single person he came into contact with.

I am so proud of my little brother. We were too far away and would have been late for the movie but he said that if that were not the case he would have gone back and paid for the man’s bill because “we are Christians and we LOVE you.” And that is what it means to be a Christian. To be Christ-like. To love those who hate you. I don’t care where you stand on the issue of homosexuality. That is not the point. Christians everywhere are missing the point. Christ said, “A new command a give you, love one another, as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34) That’s it. That’s what it means to be Christ-like. What it should mean to be a Christian.  

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