When Christ proclaimed, “Love thy neighbor,” he did not add, “but only if they share your exact views and look and act like you.”
The Christian culture today is not one of love — it is a culture that would hate Jesus for being a brown Jewish man. A culture that would call him a hippie socialist. A culture that would look at Christ’s words and cry heresy.
I am not saying all Christians are like this or even most, yet the loudest ones use their voices to spew hatred.
To try to find a loving church today is equivalent to finding a needle in a haystack. Modern Churches are ripe with hatred. I have seen excuses for Islamophobic attacks, people barred for whom they love, and church boards more focused on money than aid and love for their neighbors — all from so-called “holy men”.
How can a religion calling for selfless love contain people who would rather watch their brothers and sisters under Christ die than lose a penny of profit — people who would rather throw out their own children than take a moment to understand?
John 4:8 says “The person who doesn’t love does not know God, because God is love”. To follow Christ is to put love first and foremost, yet these so-called “Christians” favor hate. They are not Christians, they are Old Testament bigots who Jesus would have chased out of a church with a whip.
Jesus ate with the poor, washed the feet of prostitutes, and forgave his murderers. Even if other religions or sexualities were sins — which they are not — Jesus would still embrace them. The Lord would prefer if we got theology wrong, not the loving the neighbor part wrong.
“And do good unto your parents, and near of kin, and unto orphans, and the needy, and the neighbor from among your own people, and the neighbor who is a stranger, and the friend by your side, and the wayfarer.” This is from the Quaran, as Allah and God are one and the same. The most important part is love, in all Abrahamic religions, for as Peter 4:8 says “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”.
I love my religion and all my brothers and sisters under Christ, yet I will not strive to sit at a table that Jesus would have flipped over.
Modern religion needs to change back to the love Jesus wanted, a love that has not been seen for hundreds of years. Christianity is understandingly dying out as fewer and fewer people accept hating themselves for the approval of others.
Until the average church will return to love and hang a pride flag in their window, until they will co-host a soup kitchen with the local Mosque and Synagogue, until they will use their affluence to help the poor and not harm them, until then I will not be satisfied. Amos 5:24 says “we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream”.
