Did I Forget to Tell You that Others Matter?

We look back over our lives and all of us can see blind spots we have had.  Our mistakes and miscalculations show up clearly in the bright light of 20-20 hindsight.  In these months leading up to retirement, I am trying to be honest about my own faithfulness to the high calling of Christ.

As I look at the state of the church and the world, I cannot escape the question:  Did I forget to tell my congregations that others matter?  Did I unintentionally leave out the central core of Christian faith that we are all brothers and sisters in God’s heart and that, in faithfulness to that reality, when we are right with God, we always live with an eye toward others?  People who live for themselves and themselves alone are living in a direction that is contrary to the Gospel.  God loved – so He gave.  And He gave us a Savior who taught us to love others – in fact, a Savior who taught us that at the heart and soul of being right with God is treating others the way we want to be treated.

And further, when people live for only those they like or agree with, are shortchanging and misrepresenting the truth of God’s heart.  Others matter.  All others.  Rich and poor, black and white and yellow and brown, male and female….the list of differences has to be completely comprehensive to represent God’s heart.  Others matter.  A lot.  They matter to God and, for anyone who claims to be part of the movement of God’s great love, others matter.  

I look at the way people are acting (in church and in our nation) and think I—and other Christian preachers—must have forgotten to tell people that the Christian life – at its core—is reaching out with love for others.  Did we forget?  Or did people missed all those Sundays?  Or were people present and not listening (always a very real possibility)?   Were people were listening and thought that treating others right was a message for someone else?  What ever happened, it has left Christians in serious spiritual jeopardy and makes a mess of our world and a shambles of Christian witness.

I do not have the capacity to explain the disparity between the common actions of church people today and the clear, consistent foundation of Christian faith:  love for others.  The discrepancy between our actions as Christian people in this nation and our core profession of faith is frightening to me.  And sad.  And very disheartening.

Beyond the huge disconnect of our core faith and the actions of “believers”, in recent years there is an additional wound to our witness:  a belligerence that only spotlights how little people understand Christian faith.  People are openly saying, “This is my stand and I don’t care who is offended.”  People pass along Facebook memes that are false and insulting and mocking and cruel and then tag that they are a Christian and proud of it.  I see a constant degrading of faith made by Christians themselves.  They are not only failing at the Golden Rule by a mile, they are proud of it.  My heart stays in a constant state of disbelief and heartache.

Beyond the truth that Jesus taught us that the Golden Rule is of primary importance (See Matthew 7:12; 22:38; Mark 12:31), He was absolutely explicit that there are none who are disqualified from being recepients of love.  Jesus says if we only do good to those who agree with us or like us, then that is no credit to us at all.  Even pagans can do that. (Matthew 5:46).The only witness consistent to the teaching of Christ is when we follow Him in reaching out to all people with compassion and grace.  It terrifies me to hear the degrading way some Christian people talk about the poor – whom Jesus explicitly loved.  I am scared to see Christians label anybody who disagrees with them as an enemy….and, by some strange twist away from Christian faith, decides that, because of that disagreement, they have a blank check to attack, degrade, insult or mock their enemies without a second thought.

If preachers had been preaching and people had been listening all these years, they would AT LEAST have a second thought. J  If we and they had been familiar with God’s ways, we would have stopped this in its tracks.   In His life and teaching, Jesus could not have been more plainour obligation to love our enemies.

I want, with all my heart, to say that I did not forget to tell my people that others matter.  Butin light of the world I see, I dare not claim that I – or any of us—have preached this central message as clearly and consistently as we have needed.  To any extent that I am part of the failure that Christian people have not gotten the message right, this is a big failure—a failure that is heavy on my heart.

I cannot make up for years where I may have forgotten or soft-pedaled this central truth.  Let me take the time I have now to be clear:  in the heart of a Christian, others matter.  We cannot be aligned with God’s heart if we are not loving others. Others matter:  others who agree with us, others who disagree with us, others who are like us, others who are very dissimilar to us.  God holds us all in His heart.  And when we represent that great heart, others matter.  It is never too late to get this right