hmmm, this stayed up a bit longer than i intended
i originally wrote it because i was pissed at the contradiction of christians
who say/think that they love all people like they are supposed to, but look on
"the losers", "the freaks", "the assholes",
"the douchebags" with just as much disdain as the next person in
line. if they find it this hard to love those immediately around them,
how are they supposed to extend their love to the proverbial tax
collector? of course, they get all philanthropic when they see a homeless
guy coming up down the block asking for spare change, but not too many hours
later they are getting into petty arguments with their friends or fighting
selfishly with their siblings.
i write "they" but i might as well substitute the word “we”, because
the more i wrote, the more i realized that i wasnt being as cynical as i was
being honest. it was surprising, and more than a little bit
embarrassing. of course, i wouldn’t normally admit to agreeing with most
of the thoughts i put up there. I know the reasoning in why all the above
have worth and that thinking of these human beings as being somehow unworthy of
love or redemption is to fall into the Christian cliché of self-righteousness,
but my actions and baser thoughts would tell otherwise.
In stark contrast to the shallowness of “Christian” love
that we see all around us, our pastor talked today about the amish response to
the shootings in their community when a man walked in and shot 17 to 18 times
before killing himself. the same day,
the family of those wounded came down to the widow of the gunman and told them
that they forgave her late husband, and her.
They went so far as to set up a fund for that family and attended the
gunman’s funeral as well. It’s kind of
funny actually. I’m reading the
wikipedia article on it right now and apparently, there were some commentators
who
“criticized the swift and complete forgiveness with which
the Amish responded, arguing that forgiveness is inappropriate when no remorse
has been expressed, and that such an attitude runs the risk of denying the
existence of evil”
it makes me mad too.
“no remorse has been expressed” “denying the existence of evil”…
those who wrote that no remorse had been expressed were
almost certainly not there to see the mourning going on at the other funerals.
Our pastor told us of a boy who was at the funeral weeping. A reporter came and asked him how he could
forgive when he was hurt so deeply, and the boy responded “hurt? yes, but that hurt does not belay forgiveness”. and how could they write that the amish were denying the existence
of evil when the tragedy itself was proof of evil’s existence?
It reminds me of how the pastor said that reporters
described the response as “beyond human comprehension”. The reporters clearly didn’t understand it. I don’t claim to understand it fully
myself, except in theory. They were
able to forgive because they (and we ourselves) are called to love with a
radical love that transcends the love that we are humanly capable of, and we
are able to do this because Christ first loved us
Happy Easter | 
