Day 15 - Loving All Kinds

 

"Some read the Beatitudes as Jesus’ version of what Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit,” where Paul speaks of love and joy and peace and self-control (Galatians 5:22–23). This is not what the Beatitudes are. Instead, they are a listing of the sorts of people who have found their way into the kingdom vision of Jesus, the sorts of people who love Jesus. All kinds of people love God. We can embrace this diversity."

Today's thoughts were interesting for me.  First of all, when I read the title for the day, I thought that he would be talking about loving all kinds of people who need Jesus.  But that wasn't really his focus today -- instead, he was talking about loving all the kinds of people who love God.  And then he went on to talk about loving those who love others.  In other words, one of the ways that we live out the Jesus Creed in our lives is to partner with and appreciate all kinds of people who love God and love others.  This was interesting to me because I have, at times in my life, kind-of had this thought that the particular group of God-loving, Christian people that I was a part of were the only ones really out there doing the work of God.  In a sense, it was up to us, and only us, to save the whole world.  When I write it down and look at it that way now, it seems arrogant to me - or perhaps, ignorant.  Those are strong words, but I don't know any other way to say it. 

Today, when I look around, and as I have opened up and experienced the work of other God-loving, Christian people outside of my once rather small circle, I find all of these kinds of people mentioned in the beattitudes...  many kinds of churches reaching all kinds of people with different ministries both in my community and all over the world, those reaching out to and loving and serving the homeless, those who are living and working alongside the addicted who are trying to overcome their struggles, those on college campuses creatively and passionately reaching students, those giving up vacation time and leaving their families to go into places that have been through natural disasters and do whatever they can to help and serve and love...   and on and on. 

So I find myself today, as McKnight said, 'embracing the diversity' of all the different kinds of people who are out there loving God and loving others and continuing to wonder about and look for the ways that I may join in along with them.  It has certainly opened up many new ways to love others as Jesus did.  :)

[ I do have one thing I'd like to say about McKnight's statement above that hit me the wrong way...  He makes a strong statement about the idea that the beattitudes are not just Jesus' version of the 'fruits of the spirit' saying that idea is just not what the beattitudes are.  I find myself these days getting a bit suspicious of such strong denouncements of other's ideas.  I went back and read through the beattitudes with the 'fruit of the spirit' idea in mind and I can see how someone could interpret them that way.  In my mind, it's not such a bad way to look at them - I think it just gives you another way to gain insight into them.  So that's just my take on that - and it probably just reveals my new 'bias' that we have to be cautious about thinking that there is only one way to look at a passage of scripture... ]